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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



LIOHEnsr TUFTS. 



LICHEN TUFTS. 



FEOM THE ALLEGITANIES. 



Elizaeeth C. ^Yeigut. 




M. DOOLADT, 49 WALKER STREET. 



1860. 






T5 ,3 3 6 4- 



Entered according to Act of Congress iti the year 1860, by 

M. DOOLADY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 

District of New York, 



R. CKAIGUEAD, 

Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper, 
(Caiton 13uiltitng, 

81 , 83, and 83 Ceidre StTeet. 



Somebody says that " A Cathedral would hardly 
hold my acquaintances — the pulpit would accommo- 
date my friends." This volume, with my compli- 
ments, is addressed to the Cathedral full— to the few 
in the pulpit it is dedicated with the love of 

THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Into the Woods, 9 

The Nature Cure. — For the Body, 56 

The Nature Cure.— For the Mind, 79 

The Perfection of the Natural, 99 

A Pilgrim Pagan, lit 

A Dream Anthem, . . . 124 

The Lost Lake, 127 

"Love in a Cottage," 138 

The Dual Spirit, 150 

A Word to the Weary, 160 

By the Mississippi, 164 

Sacrament, 166 

Make not Poverty's Cup too Bitter 167 

To-Day, . . ' 169 

Summer Friendship, 172 

By the Sea-Side, 173 

I'll tell you, Coz, 175 

Pity, ; ... 177 

Twain, 178 

Voices, 180 

Beautiful Life, 183 

Phantom Building, 185 

"Liberty — Equality— Brotherhood," 187 



VUl CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The Picture on the Wall, 189 

One April Eve, 191 

By a Lake Side, 192 

The Death Watch, 193 

Our own Old Woods, ; . 195 

Snow Song, 199 

Martha, 200 

Star-Beams in Shadow Land, 201 

Stagnation, 204 

Lullaby, 206 

Sheaves of Time's Harvest, 207 

A Yoice from Afar, 209 

Anniversary Letter, 211 

Anniversary Letter, . . 213 

Modern Fairies, 216 

Fragment, 218 

Vigil Lessons, . . , 219 

Life's Nooning Song, 221 

The Moon of Blossoms in Prairie Land, 222 

A Reverie, 225 

Alter Ego, 22*7 



LICHEN TUFTS. 



INTO THE WOODS. 



We were tired and wanted a holiday, so we went off 
into the woods, out of the way of finery and etiquette, 
and conventional rubbish, where we should escape from 
fashionable twaddle, gossips, and flirts — from humbugs 
and household botberation, and be free to rest and 
refresh ourselves at leisure. Such an elimination of the 
ordinary burden of life's occupations would not only 
leave us free, but make us rich with an unheard of 
wealth of hours, per diem, at our own disposal. 

So running the gauntlet of all manner of croaking 
prophecies about colds and rheumatisms, and spiders 
crawling into our ears, and caterpillars creeping in at 
our mouths, and of all manner of shocked proprieties 
wagging dissenting heads at us, and a prospective storm 
of " I told you so's ! " to hail our disappointed and 
untimely return, we 2-)acked up our bed and board in 
the narrowest possible compass, and went ofl, like over- 
grown children, to play in the woods. 

This simple performance, like many another, unde- 
signedly put a variety of pretty professions to an miex- 

1 



10 LICHEN TUFTS. 

pectecl test of their genuineness. It was sui'iDrising to 
find how many readers of verse, who professed to love 
poetry, and to appreciate the enthusiasm of the poet- 
lovers of Nature, shrank from any actual participation 
in a poetic life. Mr. A., who could quote volumes of 
poems, thought a man who could live comfortably at 
home, and have a good hot dinner every day, would be 
a fool to go into the woods where hard beds and cold 
dinners would be inevitable. 

Then there was gallant Mr. B., who compares women 
with angels, and grows ecstatic over a fine voice or a 
graceful carriage, was afraid to trust himself in a camp- 
ing out excursion "burdened with so many incum- 
brances ! " meaning ladies. 

Mrs. C, who is fond of Shakspeare, maugre his out- 
landish heroines in boys' clothes, was shocked at women 
exposing themselves so, and doing such unladylike 
things as the ladies of our company proposed to do ; 
and sentimental Miss D. thought it would injure her 
complexion, and though she could admire Ellen 
Douglass, 

" Though the sun, with ardent frown, 
Had shghtly tmged her cheek with brown ;" 

still she feared tan more than she loved sunshine and 
poetic living. 

Mr. E. told eerie stories about belated hunters unwit- 
tingly camping on a rattlesnake's den, or at the foot 
of a panther-haunted tree, or in the favorite retreat of a 
family of bears, less amiable than those w^hich enter- 
tained little Silver Hair in their domicile. 

Mrs. F. imagined that there was a tornado somewhere, 



INTO THE WOODS. 11 

keeping on purpose for us, when we should once get 
inextricably into the forest, when the tall trees could 
come crashing down upon us from every hand ; and the 
G.'s dreaded wild fire and wilder flood, lost bridges, 
unfordable rivers, and nameless disasters. One would 
think, if they were to be believed, that our quiet and 
" grand old woods " were huge receptacles of dangers 
and discomforts, unconquerable and terrific. But some 
of us were good woodsmen and knew better, and longed 
for the cool pure liberty of their hidden depths. 

We were wearied with the experimental rehearsal of 
life's drama, and ready to go back of all rehearsals and 
acting, into the forests and grottoes where the air 
breathes poetry, and all the elements of grander dramas 
than ever we have enacted, are created and exhaled by 
rock, and tree, and moss — by cool spring and shady 
river — by many-toned birds, and bright-hued insects, and 
shy wild beasts — by fog, and cloud, and wind, sunshine, 
and rain, and dew. We had a mind to lie out under 
the skies and catch any divine ideas that might fall, with 
falling stars, on the soul not shut in from them by lath 
and shingles. We would lie on the bosom of Mother 
Earth and listen to her breathing, and thereby interpret 
her dreams. We would hush still the life that was in 
us, and listen for " the sound of growing things." Per- 
haps if our own hearts would beat silently awhile, we 
might be able to hear the pulses of the green-blooded 
plants, and the breathing of leafy lungs. If one of us 
should be endowed with genius enough to write out a 
faint transcript of the divine poem we found growing 
wild in the wilderness, our croaking neighbors would 
perhaps shed tears of sentimental rapture over the 



12 LICHEN TUFTS. 

beauty of the fragmentary transcrii^t (especially if they 
did not know wlio wrote it), although they believed the 
living poem was not worth taking the trouble of going 
to see. It was all the pleasanter, however, that they 
preferred hot coffee and feather beds to cold water and 
hemlock brush, for we were not in any danger of being 
crowded or jostled in the Temple of Sylvan us, to which 
we were going, as devout a caravan of j)ilgrims as ever 
visited any shrine. 

If we could only have gone as the birds go, unbur- 
dened with baggage and unmindful of raiment, we 
should have been superlatively happy. It was a very 
great relief, even with these drawbacks, to go where 
we might wear the same apparel day after day, without 
remark or change, and this apparel too of the simplest 
and most convenient character. It would be as incon-* 
gruous as stupid to carry finery into our democratic 
woods, where hemlock knots and bramble brush are no 
respecters of persons, and Avill tear a dandy's rigging or 
a fine lady's flounces as placidly as they rend a beg- 
gar's rags. I commend you to Allegany underbrush, 
ye who hate frippery and fandangles, and have a liking 
for seeing them put to the proof by contact with what 
is genuine, and strong, and beautiful. But " they that 
Avear soft raiment are in king's houses," or at least far 
enough from these sombre retreats of verdure ; and as 
the beggars, too, are only to be found in the neighbor- 
hood of fine houses, we enjoyed a respite from the 
heavy presence of both the livers for flattery and the 
livers on broken victuals. 

It is bad enough any time to have some lazy men- 
dicant thrust a lying document under your nose, and 



IN^TO THE WOODS. 13 

assure you in good fair type that the holder is some 
Italian patriot, whose family are waiting in the interior 
of Mount Vesuvius for him to collect the means of 
having them dug out, and that as he can't speak English 
he has to get his begging done by his printed paper, 
which we all know is but one of a whole edition of such 
documents carried about by similar vagabonds. Ten to 
one if you tell the scamp he can understand English, he 
will swear to you in a most rascally accent, but quite 
comprehensible, that he really can't talk at all. But 
these poor liars " of the baser sort " are not near so 
oifensive as many respectable liars we meet every day, 
and whose polite falsehoods wx dare not kick out of 
doors so heartily. When your soul is utterly weary 
with shaking hands ^^dth pretence, and conversing with 
make-believes, you too will be ready for such a plunge 
into the wilderness. 

A few requisite qualifications were needed, and a few 
equipments necessary for our outfit, and though they 
were few, they were rare enough to make our party 
none of the largest. The members of it must be able 
to stand fire and water, and be of sterner stuff than 
dolls or carpet knights are made of. It would not do 
to have one of us get frightened at a bear track or be 
uneasy at sleeping in a wall-less lodge in the wilder- 
ness. A love of Nature and Adventure, and an indif- 
ference to Luxury, were requisite. These three prime 
requisites for an explorer or a hunter, could not be 
dispensed with, even for the Lilliputian undertaking we 
had in hand. 

When equipped we looked a singular group of ani- 
mals enough. Our captaui wore a scarlet upper garment, 



14 LICHEN TUFTS. 

called by courtesy a shooting jacket, but which to the 
uninitiated bore a decided family resemblance to a red 
flannel shirt, fastened by a leather belt buckled around 
his waist, and when this was surmounted by his shot 
pouch and powder horn, he looked decidedly picturesque, 
and would have been gobbled after by all the tur- 
keys in town, if we had been in town. The ladies were 
metamorphosed by short dresses, broad hats, and thick 
shoes, into as many substantial wood nymphs, ready for 
scaling rocks and fording streams. 

We left the railroad at Great Valley, for the woods 
and river here are still in possession of the aboriginal 
inhabitants, the grave and friendly Senecas. 

There was an agreeable contrast between the manners 
of the white inhabitants around the depot, and the red 
inhabitants round about. The Yankee curiosity of the 
former was all agog to know who we were, and where 
we came from, and Avhat we came for, and what could 
possess us to do so outlandish a -thing. They reminded 
one of the comments of the poet Wordsworth's neigh- 
bors, who believed his visitors to be a doubtful and 
suspicious set of persons, because he and they went " out 
o' nights " to enjoy moonlight views. 

The Indians, however, to whom camping out was a 
more natural phenomenon, and who were not plagued 
with so great a desire to meddle with other people's 
concerns, took it in a very matter-of-course sort of 
fashion, and did not take the trouble to stare after us, 
nor to make impertinent inquiries. The courtliest polite- 
ness could not have ignored the singularity of our 
appearance and proceedings more completely. Much 
of the picturesqueness of their character has been civi- 



INTO THE WOODS. 15 

lized away, but the serious dignity and hospitable cour- 
tesy remam. 

Our first camp was unfortunately chosen, but we 
comforted ourselves with the doubtful adage, that "A 
bad beginnmg makes a good ending," and made the 
best of it we could. Our Izaak Waltons had a trout 
brook down in the programme, and inquired for one at 
the depot, and a young Seneca accordingly ferried us 
over the river, and piloted us a quarter of a mile through 
the woods, to a deeply shaded, mossy bank, overlooking 
the desired trout fishery. We soon found, however, 
that our location was possessed of several qualifications 
not down on the programme. The thick damp woods 
swarmed with mosquitoes, which invaded even the dense 
curtain of smoke we hung to the windward of our 
hastily erected tent. We were tired and sleepy, and 
having sj^read a pallet of hemlock boughs we lay down 
to rest ; but our visitors were hungry, and thii*sty, and 
importunate, and had greatly the advantage of us in 
numbers, and so made our first essay at camping out 
rather more spirited and musical than tranquil or 
agreeable. 

We arose in the morning devoutly thankful that our 
ease-loving companions had stayed at home, and sincerely 
glad that our camp was easily moved to some more 
eligible spot of earth. It was not so easily done, how- 
ever, but that it might have been a great deal easier 
if we had not encumbered ourselves with so much lug- 
gage. We had agreed at the outset that we would 
take as little as would suffice for our needs during the 
expedition ; but all being novices at this kind of fife, and 
some of us having such hospitable ideas of the sufficient, 



16 LICHEN TUFTS. 

we found ourselves wlien all assembled, entrenched 
behind a rampart of goods and chattels — provisions, 
blankets, artillery, and ammunition — books, portfolios, 
and spare garments, so that we felt as " hard set" to 
know what to do with our supplies as did the man who 
drew an elephant in a lottery. The comforts of life are 
very inconvenient travelling companions. How were 
we to transport our civilized rubbish through the woods? 
If we had been Dutch peasant women, we could have 
carried it on our heads, but as our crania had been 
accustomed to bear only less material burdens, we had 
to cast about us for some different mode of conveyance. 
I made "TValden" play Balaam for us, and "curse us" 
all that aggregation of the plagues of luxury our own 
" cursing" was unequal to. 

He says : " The more you have of such things the 
poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the 
contents of a dozen shanties ; and if one shanty is poor, 
this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we 
move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviae / 
at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, 
and leave this to be burned. It is the same as if all these 
traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not 
move over the rough country where our Imes are cast 
without dragging them, — dragging his trap." — " I think 
that the man is at a dead set who has got through a 
knot-hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture 
cannot follow him." — " It Avould surpass the powers of 
a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and 
I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed 
and run. When I have met an immigrant tottering 
under a bundle which contained his all — looking like an 



INTO THE WOODS. 1*7 

enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his 
neck — I have pitied him, not because that was his all, 
but because he had all that to carry. If I have got to 
drag my trap I will take care that it be a light one and 
do not nip me in a vital i^art. But perchance it would 
be wisest never to put one's j^aw into it." 

When we crossed the river to encamp by our trout 
brook and mosquito factory, we had passed through one 
of those " knot-holes " where our baggage had to remain 
behind at the hotel. Now we returned to take u^d our 
burdens again and move on. 

It was a glorious July day, blue and golden, with the 
fiery languor of summer's noon, quivering in the heated 
air, only stirred now and then by a cool breeze winding 
up the river, like a pure and fresh aspiration ii^ a life of 
indolence and passion. All day long the active portion 
of our party had hunted and fished without catching 
anything, or had romped in the woods and on the river 
without having the fear of torn garments or wet feet 
before their eyes. It was utterly delightful to let our- 
selves loose, and live freely ; to have no rules for coming 
in or going out, for rising up or sitting down; to be 
emancipated from the bondage of the ceremonial law, 
and do what pleased us best was j)aradisiacal enough. 
The girls tried to learn to throw stones, but did not 
succeed very well. When the unsuccessful hunters 
returned, Elvira took a lesson in shooting at a mark. It 
was awkward business, though she finally succeeded in 
taking aim, but somehow or other her fingers did not 
avail to make the thing go off. Two or three attempts 
failed, and she was on the eve of giving up in despair, 
when a mo squitj^ settled comfortably on^her outstretched 

1* 



18 IJCHEN TUFTS. 

finger, and began to try the flavor of the savory fluids 
hid under that thin white cuticle. 

Elvira is very sensitive on the subject of mosquitoes. 
She has a great tenderness towards them, and they make 
strong and lasting impressions upon her. Owing to this 
amiable weakness she is agitated and alarmed at their 
approach, and this unexpected salute so startled her that 
the bitten finger closed convulsively, and the gun was 
discharged. No doubt the load hit something, for it is 
not probable that it is yet wandering unresting through 
the air, but what it hit is unknown. Elvira insisted that 
she fired at the mosquito, and killed it — I, for one, believe 
her. 

Having thus fired our sunset gun, we emigrated from 
our camp, and pursued our way. Our passage had been 
secured in a scow, bound for the mouth of the Kenjua, 
and loaded with provisions. As it was not quite loaded 
we were obliged to await its completion at the hotel. 
There was a mingling of odors about the mansion, com- 
mon about kindred places, and no more disagreeable 
than at any other time, I suppose ; but coming in from 
the fresh fragrance of the woods, the smells of tobacco 
and whiskey, onions and pork, soapsuds, codfish, cofiee 
and supper, all united, were disgusting to the last degree, 
especially to those who could not " eat in faith " in any 
tavern, because too familiar with the kitchen. 

They were a long time loading the boat, and when it 
was done, they came and told us that one of the hands 
was too iti to proceed, and that they should not start 
that night. We held a brief council to discuss the 
question, " Which shall we do, stay in the inn, or go out 
of town and eecamp?" The "towW' was a little 



INTO THE WOODS. 19 

pocket affair, easily got out of, but it was now sunset. 
But then July twilights linger longer than most wel- 
come guests do, so that much could be done in that 
pleasantest hour of the pleasantest time in all the year. 
Susie seemed to have a mind to try the benefit of a 
feather bed, but where was the use of coming sixty 
miles from our feather beds at home, to sleep in a tavern 
where all manner of people sleep ? For myself I felt 
with a selfish emphasis, that all the sleep in the world 
was but of doors, and could be found nowhere else that 
night. 

I had grown uj) in woods like these, and they were 
home to me. I had been absent from them two years 
in the west, and had longed with more unspeakable 
homesickness for the evergreen woods and mountain 
air, than for hfhne or friends. Among them again I 
could not afford to waste an atom of their riches, so 
longed for and coveted while I was gone. The moun- 
tain echoes were ravishing music to ears wearied with 
the flat echoless sounds of prairie land. "Who could 
afford to sleep indoors and thus lose any part of that 
grand Oratorio of unwritten music played by the wind 
on a wilderness of harps ? 

There was a whizzing of car wheels, and a rumbling 
of wagons — a clatter of tongues, and the ominous 
scraping of a fiddle on the depot steps oj)posite the inn. 
There were several young ladies with many-tailed head- 
dresses and frightfully big hoops, who were menacingly 
poUte. These were more to be dreaded than a return 
of the ague. The noises jarred harshly on souls longing 
for sweet accords and divine harmonies. 

A few rods off on either hand, stretching far beyond 



20 LICHEN TUFTS. 

our sight, "lay tlie cool, dim forest with its music and its 
silence whispering together in the twilight. When 
out of this present little sphere of racket, one could 
hear the solemn anthem of the far off pmes, and the 
monotonous rush of living waters. Away from this 
poisoned air, beyond this clang and discord, yet close at 
hand, a wilderness full of fragrance and music waited 
for us. 

The old boatman, who was an old hunter too, took 
our baggage and some of us in a skiff, half a mile down 
the river, and landed us in as beautiful a spot as we 
could hope to find. Our grizzly and half-tipsy Charon 
appreciated our errand heartily. He had no wonder- 
ment about the oddity of our choice of amusement as our 
civilized fellow citizens had had. They could hardly be 
convinced that we really meant to do a© very odd and 
uncomfortable a thing as to go out and try to Hve the 
poetry which was only fit to read, but the Indians took 
it as a matter of course, and our boatman delighted in 
it. He had lived in the woods for many and many a 
year, he said, and had followed the river until he could 
pilot it in the dark. We must certainly come to his 
place on the Kenjua. It was the greatest kind of a 
place for trout. Kenjua was Seneca iorfish creek^ and 
it was rightly named. He would delight to show us 
everything, rattlesnakes and all. 

We landed on the pebbly beach under a spreading 
sycamore, which leaned its heavy head waterward, and 
seemed to be looking at itself in that ever wavering 
mirror, as it reflected its gleaming white arms and made 
them sway and beckon upwards, though the tree itself 
stood still. But the deep water shoaled to a ripple 



INTO THE WOODS. 21 

here, and each separate facet of every wave set up for 
a mirror on its own account, reflecting what it could at 
a miscellaneous variety of angles of reflection and re- 
fraction, so that the sycamore had the pleasure of 
beholding its own clearly defined and pointed foliage 
run together into an indefinite mop of green, dancing 
incessantly on the changeful surface. There was a 
curve in the river here like a silver bow, and on the op- 
posite side, which was the outer rim of the crescent, the 
water was tranquil as a pond. From its waveless edge 
up to the region of clouds, rose the hill abrupt and dark, 
clothed to its very summit with an unbroken mass of 
evergreens, rising tier on tier up the steep side of this 
" mountain wall," whose shadow lay, like a fragment of 
midnight, on the pool below. AYe encamped on the 
grass under the lighter foliage of young trees w^hich 
clothed our side of the stream. A grassy open space 
spread towards the river before us, and a sheltering 
thicket gloomed behind. We built three bright drift- 
wood fires in a triangle, and within the area we spread 
our blankets in gipsy-like groups, and with a roof of 
sky and stars above and walls of green tapestry about 
us, we lay down, safe and happy, and watched the sparks 
fly up like showers of stars among the leaves, and saw 
the smoke go rolling upwards like home-brewed clouds, 
going to seek their kindred above. A grateful content, 
a peaceful rest, such as comes to happy children, settled 
upon us like dew upon the grass, and those who did not 
sleep lay listening to the " voices of the night." 

He who lives under the eaves of the forest wdll learn 
the voices of the trees. They have a definite speech 
which the initiated can understand. Here lies the germ 



22 LICHEN TUFTS. 

•of truth which makes the charm of the Oriental fable, 
that some persons can learn the languages of beasts and 
birds and all living things. Even our dull Western ears 
can learn, by long listening, to distinguish the differences 
in the whisperings of trees. If you sit at a street win- 
dow in one of the thc^roughfares of a cosmopolitan city, 
and listen to the varied gibberish jabbered in the streets, 
you will soon learn to tell the Irish and Scotch brogues 
apart, and as easily tell the Swedish from German, or 
Spanish from Italian or French, without knowing any 
language but your mother tongue. So in the woods. 
You may not know what the leaves say in their musical 
whisperings, but you will know their several tongues. 
The voices of trees are as characteristic as the voices 
of the human race. The poet eye of the traveller was 
in love with the tall troj)ic palms of the Indian isles, and 
he thought it would be hfe enough for a poet to lie 
ever under that broad, plumy foliage, and be fanned by 
those leafy wmgs. But the sea breeze came and whis- 
pered, and the harsh, reedy hissing of the joalm-tree's 
greeting disenchanted the finely-attuned ear, and the 
poet soul returned to its allegiance to the pines of his 
native hills. We should not have believed him to be a 
poet if he had not remained loyal to the oldest of the 
forest kings, and greatest minstrel and bard of them all. 
The founder of the cone-bearing dynasty lies buried a 
thousand " aeons" deep under the coal-measures, on 
the spot where it held up its green seolian harps to 
catch the primal winds, on which no wings had ever 
been sj)read — which had never thrilled to a morning 
bird's song, nor vibrated to the notes of a grasshopper. 
The empty sea beat on the desolate shore, and only the 



INTO THE WOODS. 2 a 

lonely shell, and this old Homer of all the trees, heard 
its throbbing and answered its song. That land has 
sunk down in the sea, and the waves have rolled over it 
since then. That ocean has frozen to glaciers and 
melted again. The land has risen out of its long bath, 
and been peopled by strange creatures, and that sea 
has teemed with monstrous shapes, but the cone-trees 
from the mountains have answered the song of the 
waves through all the ages and their changes. 

Older than man, or beast, or bird — older than the 
crumbling soil we tread, that has been deposited here, 
particle by particle, for thousands of years — it stands, 
sombre and tall, over the deep-buried graves of its 
primeval kindred, and holds up its seolian harp-strings 
to the touch of its immortal lover, the wmd. Together 
they chant the heroic song of the Ages, at once a 
requiem and a battle-cry — a prophecy and a dirge. 
There is in it a reminiscence of the song of the morning 
stars w^hen they sang together — a lingering echo of the 
great shout of joy over the new creation, uttered by 
the sons of God ; and the dying sigh of the dead Ages 
and their lost types of being, is repeated in the song of 
the Pine. 

A stranger would hardly know the roar of the wind 
among the hemlocks from the deeper and hollower 
sound it brings out of the longer leaved tops of the 
pines, but a novice could distinguish the difference in 
their whispers. It is the difference between a robin's 
" Good morning ! " and the wood-thrush's " Good 
night ! " 

There are two kinds of aspen trees here in the under- 
wood, distinguishable from all other trees by the fairy 



24 LICHEN TUFTS. 

tap, tap, tapping of their leaves against each other when 
the other woods are still. I know no common names by 
which to distinguish one from another. They are both 
known hereabouts by the names of " Popple," " Quak- 
ing Asj)," and "Aspen." The tremuloides is the^nore 
restless and sensitive of the two, as well as the more 
graceful. Its smooth, heart-shaped leaves dance on 
their long flattened stems long after the wind has gone 
by, and by the constant beckoning of its many hands 
seems calling the rover back again. A sound like the 
clapping of elfin hands issues from it, and seems to be 
calling the invisible air with an oft-reiterated " Come ! 
Come ! Come ! " The more sleepy grandidentata^ which 
rolls its fuzzy leaves out of its white buds a fortnight 
later in the spring than its early rising relative, is a 
slightly graver personage, and does its taj)-tapping to 
a slower tune. Its leaves dance, but in a more solemn, 
or mayhap a lazier measure, for it is not always easy 
to tell laziness and drawl from gravity and solemnity. 
The grandiose name of the larger aspen, however, inl- 
presses one with the notion that the rapidity of the 
movements of the tremuloides would be beneath its 
dignity. 

The magnificent magnolia acuminata of the AUe- 
ganies, known by the stupid name of cucumber tree, 
shudders audibly when struck by the wind. It is a 
grand and peculiar tree, well nigh as conspicuous in its 
individuality as the pine. Taller than any neighboring 
deciduous tree, it lifts its top straight above its com- 
peers, and even its branches and lesser boughs follow 
the proud aspirations of the trunk, and lift themselves, 
massive and angular, right upward at the ends. There 



INTO THE WOODS. 25 

is no pliant swaying, no graceful drooping of outer- 
most twigs or pendant foliage, but all are as upright as 
a Prussian regiment or a Puritan Sunday school. It 
is against its nature to bend, and the hoarse shuddering 
sigh with which it meets and buffets the blast, is uttered 
by no other tree. Its great oval, spice-breathing leaves 
carry off the wind in spouts, like a multitude of eaves 
troughs slanting to the leeward, and the rushing of these 
divided currents has the disturbed and warlike tone of 
opposing forces. It affects one like a remembered 
trumpet blast. 

Then there is the birch. It grows to a great tree 
here on the Alleganies, and has an elm-like foliage, and 
an odor of winter-green. I cannot describe its voice, 
for it is to me so associated with a very different sound, 
that I cannot think of them separately, though they are 
not alike in the least. In our old sugar bush there used 
to be a great black birch which had many years agone 
taken root on a fallen log, and its long roots had run 
down on either side to the earth and taken fast hold 
there wdiile the fallen tree decayed away from beneath 
it, leaving our birch standing on a five-legged stool of 
its own twisted roots, in the air. Another fallen log 
lay near by, covered with a thick mat of yellow, feather- 
like mosses, and on this used to stand a patriarch grouse, 
or " pheasant," or " partridge," as he was called, and 
wake the dreamy echoes with his drumming. AYe very 
rarely saw him, for he was a shy bird, but we heard him 
many times a day in his season, and found his tracks 
there. We children used to tap the old birch and catch 
its profuse sweetish sap in a little trough, to drink of 
its diluted spicery ; and that draught and its neighbor- 



26 LICHEN TUFTS. 

hood, and the tremulous thunder of the grouse's wings, 
with the hum of the wild bees which used to drink at 
the same place, are all called up by the birch's voice, 
and become part and parcel of it, past the power of 
analysis to separate them. 

No more can I remember the voice of the maple with- 
out the crackling of the fire and the singing of tlie 
heating sap-kettles, and the tinkling drip of the drops 
from the trees into the receivers all being mingled with 
it. Nor has memory any language for the sycamore 
unassociated with the dash of ripphng waters. It is not* 
to be regretted, however, for such associations make 
much of the poetry of the unwritten language of trees. 
Would you wish to forget in connexion with the long 
drawn "Hush-sh-sh!" of the willows by the stream, the 
plunging sound of the musk-rat as it leaped from its 
perch on shore and swam to a place of obscurer safety ? 
Or could you afford to drop out the sound of the occa- 
sional leaping of a fish from its element, to seize a pass- 
ing fly ; or the creaking whiz of a dragon-fly's wings, 
as it darted to and fi-o. Would you like to remember 
the beech or oak without the squirrel with puffed cheeks, 
crying " chip ! chip ! chirrrrr !" at you, as you tried to 
measure the measureless " O o o o o o o o !" sung by the 
wind in the tree tops ? 

You might as well try to think of a sleeping village 
without its barking watch-dogs guarding it, or remem- 
ber 

" Yon ivy-mantled tower," 

without thinking of its moping owl, " complainmg to 
the moon.'' 



INTO THE WOODS. 27 

There is a language too, which is not Spoken by the 
voice, bnt uttered in look, or motion, or taste, or odor. 
The resinous smell of the coniferoe speaks as distinctly 
as their wind-swept leaves. The penetrating, disease-dis- 
pelling odors of tar and turpentine, rosin and balsam, 
have the same primeval reminiscences as the voices of 
the trees that produce them. They suggest questions 
concerning the probability of some post-alluvian beauty 
decorating herself with beads of fossil rosin, as the 
belles of our day wear ornaments of amber. They 
may guess of the rosin, as we guess of the amber, how 
it was distilled in the laboratory of the sea-loving cone 
tree's trunk in some unknown ante-human era. The 
bitter spice of the magnolia and tulip trees tastes and 
smells so suggestively, as though they had had human 
experiences, that we wonder if those trees never 
travelled, nor loved, nor hated, nor suffered, nor en- 
joyed like us. 

When we read of birch and willow twigs being found 
midigested in the stomach of a fossil mammoth, we 
wonder if some birch-eating school-boy's fossil remains 
might not suggest to the post-alluvians, the notion that 
the genus boy was birchivorous in its habits. "VYe 
alluvians would be more apt to class the pedagogue 
there, but geology would hardly teach so much to the 
scientific of the next era. 

There is an odor of antiquity about the birch and 
such trees as are found as fossils, though it is but a 
mediaeval sort of antiquity after all ; its ancientness 
toned down and mellowed by the far older and darker 
backo-round of the cone-bearing^ ag^es that came before. 
This sort of reflection and research is the preparatory 



28 LICHEN TUFTS. 

course of study needed in order to understand the 
language of trees. These dead languages are super- 
classical, and have tlie advantage of being real know- 
ledge and living poetry, beside the discipline and dead 
lumber which are the recommendations of the mere 
dead human languages. 

Within the sphere of purely human oldness there 
are some trees and herbs geologically both ancient and 
modern, which are venerably hoary with the rime of 
the winters of many generations of men. The cedars 
of Lebanon would seem as old as Lebanon itself to our 
thoughts, and as venerable as the temple of Solomon, 
and as mysterious as Masonic rites, even if we knew 
nothing of the story of its fossil kindred. And to those 
who, as children, took the oar-like seeds of the ash, and 
hung them to the lip of the cypripedium, the " whippoor- 
will's shoe " of the Senecas, and called them the oars of a 
fairy-boat, the ash becomes an ancient and legendary 
tree, even before they come in after years to read the 
story of the evergreen ash tree yggdrasill, whose roots 
the dragon Niddhogg gnawed, and whose branches 
sheltered the Norns. Those fairy oars have rowed that 
legend through the age of fable down to the matter-of- 
fact sea of modern literature, and yet not a vein of that 
charmed tissue is broken, and the sharp lamina of the 
blade is as delicately veined and nerved as in the days 
when the Eddas were new. The mystic ceremonies of 
the Druids stick to the viscid berries of the sacred mis- 
tletoe, and somethmg of the smoke of their altars 
lingers in the scent of the oak on which it grew. 

But these legendary reminiscences are only historical, 
and not the natural language of the trees themselves. 



INTO THE WOODS. 29 

They speak ol tliem only to those who know the story, 
but never tell the stories themselves even to the most 
mtimate of their acquaintances. They are no part of 
the tree history proper, only an episode in which there 
is more of the history of men than of trees, and we can- 
not expect trees to learn a new dialect to add to their 
speech, that they may be able to prate of men. Yet 
we, beinoj human, Hke this odor of old human ideas 
clinging to them, and would wiUingly interpret their 
speech awry in order to find our fore-fellows mentioned 
in their chronicles. 

Tlie less pretentious herbs of the field and forest have 
a language as pithy and vigorous, according to their 
kind, as the utterances of the lordlier trees, but it is no 
such " language" as the ^^lants are accused of in your 
" Flora's Lexicons" and " Flora's Interpreters." 

Imagine Flora treading on the margin of vanishing 
winter snows, leaving flowers behind her for footprints, 
and beckoning the leaves out of their buds, and the 
flowers from their occult hiding-plaees, with her floating 
garments and drooping garlands, wearying her wreathed 
arms by lugging around an eight-cornered dictionary, 
and attended by an ominous interpreter tagging at her 
heels ! Bah ! 

This sentimental flummery could no more be mis- 
taken for the " language of flowers" by anybody who 
had ever heard the real language, than the quizzing 
schoolboy's " Iggery, wiggery, foggery, youggery !" 
could be mistaken for classic Latin by a Cambridge 
Professor. 

But it is surprising how many people take such stuff 
for poetry. It seems to be taken for granted that every- 



30 * LICHEN TUFTS. 

body who likes poetry or flowers must be maudlin 
enough to like these satiny, perfumed, illustrated books, 
with a flower's name in two or three languages (and not 
always correct at that) at the top of the page, and 
selected fragments of the productions of poets and 
poetasters strewed down the space below the name and 
motto. 

We even find a few pages at the end of our Botanical 
text books devoted to this twaddle, and when the books 
have been used awhile we find these pages have been 
used more than any other, the leaves falling apart quite 
naturally at the silliest places. 

One of these vapid prettinesses, designed for senti- 
mental young girls to read, is entitled the " Floral Dia- 
dem," though poor Flora must be as mad as King Lear 
before she will wear such a ridiculous diadem over her 
" ambrosial locks." This book, like its congeners, makes 
some botanical professions. One of the first articles in 
it contains the following erudite morsels. " It (the 
Spring Beauty) appears in the verdant meadows, upon 
the grassy hills, and in the shady groves, lifting its jjink 
striped blossoms above the ground. It varies in color 
from sky blue {//) to a fair ichite {!!). But by far the 
most common and the most beautiful are the variegated 
ones, delicately striped with pink and white. It is one 
of the earliest and loveliest flowers of spring, and is 
hnoion by the proper name of Houstonia (!) but its 
more common and pretty name among our young flower 
gatherers is Spring beauty {!!) and from its nature and 
appearance is frequently called Innocence {!!!)'''' Did any- 
body ever print three more ludicrous blunders in one 
sentence ? No country girl of ten years old would 



INTO THE WOODS. 31 

mistake the Innocence for the Spring Beauty. You 
could as easily make her believe a peony to be a rose. 
They are about as much alike as a tulip and a daffodil. 
Yet the astute writer describes both flowers without 
discovering the difference, even quoting the verse, 

" It comes when wakes the pleasant spring, 
"When first the earth is green, 
Fowr white and pale blue leaves it has 
With yellow heart between I " 

and does not discover that though it describes the 
Innocence, it does not count straight nor paint right for 
the Spring Beauty or Claytonia (instead of Houstonia), 
which has five red and white petals ahcays. 

Again hear the astounding discovery made by this 
discriminating naturalist. " It opens its bright blossoms 
in the evening, and continues until late in the morning, 
and then closes them during the rest of the day." As 
neither the HOustonia nor Claytonia answers to that 
impeachment, doubtless the Primrose or Morning Glory 
was also confounded with them in the author's mind. 
But hear now! Here come the "ginniwine scienti- 
fikils." 

" Well do I remember on a fair day in spring, taking 
my botany book and going to the grove to gather and 
analyse the wild flowers that there bespotted the quiet 
landscape. This (which ?) is the first I plucked by my 
path, whose history I traced and whose name I learned." 

And the last^ I should think, by the accuracy displayed 
in distinguishing family differences in plants. The two 
or three thus amalgamated in this floral oUa podrida do 
not belong to the same s^^ecies, genus, or natural order — 



32 LICHEN TUFTS. 

are totally dissimilar in roots, tops, leaves, stems, flowers, 
and seed ; not even being of the same color or manner 
of growth, nor the same size, the Spring Beauty being 
thrice the diminutive dimensions of the other, and 
growing scattered about everywhere, while the Inno- 
cence grows in patches, making a regular little sod of 
its own. So much for sentimental botany sweetened 
with the "Language of flowers." If the Diadem's 
piety, which it professes to teach, is as bogus as its 
botany, we w^ish it a speedy death, and a funeral sermon 
as profound as its o^vn scientific researches ; and would 
suggest as a text the one found on the 47th page of the 
Diadem, but not in the Bible : — " Consider the lilies of 
the field, they sew not, neither do they spin ! " 

If these books, and the counterfeit " language " they 
teach, had not usurped the place of the beautiful science 
on which they have grown like parasites, they would 
not be worth the trouble of chastising. But when 
sensible people come to the conclusion that botany 
amounts to little more than the language of flowers, 
and that language such idiotic gibberish as I have 
quoted from, surely it is time to enter a protest against 
such usurpation and desecration. 

No ! Ivy does not say " Festivity," nor " we will not 
part !" as these Lexicons tell us, but it says " Old ruins 
— crumbhng walls — and churchyard stones ! " and sug- 
gests bats and owls. 

To a sentimentalist of this sort, laurel will say " Glory" 
according to the books, while to the farmer it more 
emphatically says only " Dead sheep ! " Yet there is 
hardly a bumpkin in all the woods who does not pause 
to admire the laurels when they are in bloom. It mat- 



INTO THE WOODS. 33 

ters nothing to him that it is not laurel at all, but masque- 
rading in a borrowed name. It is just as beautiful as 
though it were a true laurel and did not kill sheej). I 
once heard a drunken and stupid stage driver wax 
eloquent in describing the June dress of a thirty mile 
laurel patch he was driving through, between the 
Susquehanna and Allegany rivers. It was mid Novem- 
ber, but the woods were green with the vivid verdure 
of the undergrowth of Kalmias, and the duskier over- 
growth of pines. 

" It's jest a fair sight in June ! " he said, "jest a great 
posy bed all the way. There ain't no garden like it. 
All the roses in Pennsylvany ain't a primin' to it, I tell 
you ! Jest come here in June, and you'll say you never 
saw flowers afore ! " 

But then he digressed immediately from the beautiful 
to the murderous, to tell how deer sometimes got caught 
by the horns in the laurel brush, and became an easy prey 
to hunters or wolves. 

Doubtless the laurel, like everything else, varies its 
speech to suit the notions of its listener. To me the 
laurel speaks less of glory, or murder, or beauty, than of 
liberty. It is untamably wild. Try to cultivate it, and 
it dies. Leave it in its native haunts, or cultivate around 
it, even if you do not touch it, and it dies. Transplant 
it ever so carefully, into a place apparently every way 
congenial to it, and it grows no more. The only con- 
dition you can supply to make it thrive, is absolute 
liberty. Let it alone, and make everything else do like- 
wise, and it thrives. Meddle with it, and it dies. This 
is emphatic language, and yet no sentimentahst sets dowm 
" Liberty or Death !'' as the motto of the Kalmia. I see 

2 



34 LICHEN TUFTS. 

in the Horticultural books, ways laid down for the cul- 
tivation of this shrub, but I never knew one to succeed 
in raising them, though I have known many to try. 
Many of the orchidaceae have this same deadly antipathy 
to civilization, and can only be enjoyed by the human 
race in the place where nature puts them. Do but 
loosen the earth about their roots, and the fibres begin 
to shrink and wither. Their strange fantastic flowers 
wilt away, and the buds blight. They say very plainly, 
though not loudly, " Mind your own business!" and if 
we disregard the admonition, they die to rid themselves 
of our meddlesome impertinence. Yet, as they are very 
charming, unobtrusive flowers, a sentimentalist, if he 
interpreted them at all, would make them say, " Shrink- 
ing timidity," or some other such twaddle, if he did not 
ignore these characteristics altogether, and give them 
some absurdly incongruous speech to make, as if some 
nine years' old urchin in short jacket should set about 
making Mark Antony's oration over the body of 
Caesar. 

There is no richer native order in the Northern States 
than the Ericacea3, and none with a more classic-hke 
mellowness of language. Abounding in graceful and 
varnished evergreens, in aromatic and sj^icy bitters, and 
tenderly colored and fragrant flowers, it has a fuller 
vocabulary and a more flexible tongue than most vege- 
table tribes possess. I have already interpreted the 
speech of the Kalmia, so far as I understand it, but how 
difierently speaks the wonderfully fragrant flowers of 
the leafless Azalea. It has no winter-loving foliage, to 
glitter through the drifting snows, or to welcome the 
caresses of the north wind, but an affluence of deep rosy 



INTO THE WOODS. 35 

Clips for the bouquets of spring. It comes just after the 
rock-loving "Arbutus" trails its garlands among the 
dead last year's leaves, over the sunny side of wooded 
hills, breathing out its odorous life in incense. Just 
now, in mid July, one of the smallest and prettiest of the 
tribe, the pipsissawa or prince's pine, is in its glory ; its 
sharply notched, deeply veined, glossy evergreen leaves 
making a background which throws its clustered, rosy, 
waxen bells, or rather Lilliputian saucers, into exquisite 
relief above. 

These each have a speech of their own ; each dainty, 
exquisite, and ambrosial, but different and individual 
enough. The Azalea gives one an impression of fragi- 
lity quite foreign to the other two. It is a banquet 
flower, enjoying to the full what it has to-day, and is 
nothing to-morrow. It says, " Let us eat and drink, for 
to-morrow we die!" The trailing arbutus says as 
plainly through the invisible sources of its fragrance, 
*' Seek and ye shall find !" The pipsissawa crowns itself 
with flowers at midsummer, and, like Barnaby Rudge'S 
raven, cries " Never say die !" to everybody who will 
listen. There are multitudes of carefully cultivated ex- 
otics not half so beautiful or piquant as this wild flower, 
that half our florists have never seen. The plant is well 
known to empirics as a medicine, and to garland makers, 
at Christmas, as a beautiful decoration, but who expects 
it to bloom, or who has seen its flowers? The somewhat 
similar, but not half so pretty, wintergreen, is a very 
attractive plant to children where it grows, not only the 
spicy scarlet berries but the entire young plant being 
eaten by them. One hardly expects eatables to speak 
to the eater in any but gustatory language, yet it is a 



36 LICHEN TUFTS. 

significant fact that the tongue is both the organ of taste 
and of speech. 

Many persons having a vague understanding of these 
vegetable languages, and feehng their unwritten poetry- 
quivering like music through their souls, imagine that 
any scientific knowledge of plants would dispel the poe- 
tic afflatus, distilled like an etherial essence in the hidden 
nectaries of flowers, and the secret chambers that brew 
the volatile oils. They are afraid of being disenchanted 
by huge words, and disillusions by prosaic facts. I 
fancy those persons would prefer music to be sung in a 
foreign language, so that the effect of the sound need 
not be disturbed by a comprehension of the words. 

There are a class of botanists of the mechanical sort, 
who are to science what the patent-note singing books 
are to music — mechanical, soulless anatomists of parts, 
and dictionary-like vocabularies of technology, who per- 
ceive no laws, conceive of no causes nor forces not laid 
down in the text-books : mere shallow smatterers and 
quacks, who look at a plant as they would at a new 
chimney, to see how it is built, and when its external 
structure is discovered, and its habitat indicated by a 
vegetable directory, and its name and lineage discovered 
in unintelligible Anglo-Grseco-Latin, are satisfied, espe- 
cially if its chemical qualities recommend it to the cook 
or the physician. These scientific bores disgust those 
who love flowers and trees for the sake of their beauty 
and poetry; and so, because some scientific prattlers.. are 
stupid and prosy, they think that the science of plants 
itself is unlovely and undesirable. 

K our only conception of artistic music were the 
thrumming of a novice on some tormented and wailing 



INTO THE WOODS. 37 

piano, we should hate the name of musical art, and feel 
the very calling it music took some of the sweetness 
out of the unwritten music of nature. But if no tyro 
ever drummed discord on a j^iano, no Thalberg ever 
would have drawn divine harmony from its keys. We 
must have some prophetic notion of the end from the 
beginning, in order to make the beginning endurable. 
Many would-be musicians never get beyond the dreary 
regions of thumped and rattling keys ; but there are a 
few who reach that region where Orpheus dwelt, and 
move the hills themselves with the utterance of their 
melodies. There must be beginners in everything; 
but should the ignorance of beginners frighten off or 
disgust the lovers of truth and nature from the science 
which is a key to both ? There is a world of difference 
between using a dictionary to find the meaning of words, 
and hunting up words on purpose to find them in the 
dictionary; and that is the difference between the quack 
naturalist and the real one. The true lover of poetry, 
when reading some soul-stirring poem, may come to a 
strange word, and not find the poem lose its significance 
and beauty if he should refer to a lexicon for the mean- 
ing of the new expression. A pedant may read a 
work on purpose to mouth its most obscure phrases, 
after he has hunted out their meaning in a vocabulary. 
So a true naturalist will find many hard words in the 
beautiful poem of Nature, and will search out their 
meanings, not for the love of words, but for the love of 
meanings ; while the quack will swallow the technical 
glossary for the sake of putting it forth by mouthfuls. 
But we need not let that spoil nature for us, nor need 
those whose ears are attuned to the sweet accords of the 



38 LICHEN TUFTS. 

speech of growing things allow these pedantic and 
sentimental "Flora's Lexicons" to prevent us from 
learning, at first hand, the real " language of flowers." 

This night might have been taken for an ideal model 
of one for " camping out." The soft breeze which 
wound up the river dispelled the mosquitoes which so 
tormented us the night before, and yet scarce broke the 
deep hush of midnight by its faint and drowsy breathing. 
Our mother was very near us then — nearer than we can 
ever approach her by daylight. Her breath breathed 
into our nostrils. The slow pulses from her deep foun- 
tained vital currents throbbed in our arteries, and her 
life became our life. Thank God ! for the taintless high- 
land air that made such a bivouac safe, even for those 
who had never tried it before ! 

But even the keen relish of a new experience could 
not long keep awake a weary crew, who knew that after 
that night's lullaby was over a new day with new ex- 
periences would call them to action again. Before day 
began to be visible to our eyes the wood-thrushes, who 
slept nearer the sky than we, began to break the silence 
with their gushing songs. Shade after shade of dark- 
ness ebbed away before the dawn, till at last a golden 
glory crowned the hill tops, and showed them not so far 
oflf as they seemed in the sombre twilight of the even- 
ing. How near the sky itself looked here ! Only a 
pine's length above the taller tree tops. The white frag- 
ments of cloud that floated between the sky and hills 
seemed in danger of tearing their silvery robes on the 
loftiest branches, and the wide-winged hawk that sailed 
among them, bathed in them without going beyond our 



INTO THE WOODS. 39 

sight. The sky looks immensely farther off from the 
open country, and the clouds are miles away. They are 
both too far off for neighbors and friends, such as they 
are to the highlanders. Here morning did not seem to 
flame upon us from a distant pavilion, but arose melo- 
diously from some breezy couch among the eastern hills, 
and, shaking out a thousand perfumes from her dew- 
dropping locks, smiled on our camp and kissed us. 

We arose and trimmed ourselves, and ate our break- 
fasts, and chattered and sang, like the other happy 
creatures about us. Morning is the time to laugh and 
be glad, as evening is the time to muse and be serenely 
happy; so, as we had ended one day naturally, we began 
the next naturally also, and laughed and were glad. 

The promised boat came early, but we were ready 
and waiting, and embarked for the regions below with 
alacrity and glowing expectations. We neither rowed 
nor sailed, but were drifted and poled along, seated 
upon perches like so many turkeys gone to roost, on as 
many flour barrels cushioned with our own bedding. 
The boat was a scow — a sort of shallow, square con- 
trivance for carrying loads, and this was loaded heavily. 
The draught was very inconsiderable, but the channel 
of the stream on the ripples was more trifling still, and 
we accordingly stuck fast several times. When stuck 
only at one end, we all went to the other extremity of 
the boat, and thus lightening that part, floated ofi* again ; 
but when hung by the middle, that kind of tactics 
would not do. Overboard went a lot of bipeds into 
the warm flashing water, and seizing the four corners of 
the craft with vigorous hands, and applying strong 
shoulders to them, swung the great thing, thus lightened 



40 LICHEN TUFTS. 

and urged, around broadside to the current, and free 
again. In again leaped passengers and crew with a 
joyful burst of congratulations, and a considerable ex- 
tent of dripping garments to be again hung over the 
sides of those barrels to dry in the wind and sun. Per- 
haps the soaked individuals within them tempted a siege 
of rheumatism or pneumonia by their many wettings, 
but no such distress came in consequence. 

"VYe had deep water, and slow, dream-like floating on 
a mill pond up to the dam, which was high and had the 
"slash" on besides, and was consequently impassable. 
A delay of several hours occurred here, as the boat had 
to be unloaded, and taken around the island, which 
formed one shore of the j)ond, and floated and dragged 
through the narrow and shallow channel on the other 
side, and reloaded at the foot of the dam. Unloading 
our own trumjDcry and piling it up for reloading, we 
proceeded down the river on foot. There was a house 
here in the process of erection, and loitering behind my 
companions, in a deep hollow, to examine some plants, I 
became the unintentional repository of a confab among 
the carpenters, as to whether we were Chinese, gipsies, 
or other outlandish folk ; but having secured the dalibar- 
das I was in search of, I emerged from my hole 
and lost the conclusion of the matter, but went on, 
mentally resolving that as we would not be Chinamen 
on any terms we must be gipsies, and might as well go 
to fortune-telling at once. 

The river banks are high and steep, and often nearly 
perpendicular, with a gravelly beach at the foot at low 
water. Along this gravelly river's margin are sprinkled 
many cold clear springs of water, close to the river's 



INTO THE WOODS. 41 

edge. A slight freshet covers them all with Uu'bid 
water from the hills and surrounding country, but now 
that the river was low and warm, these beautiful little wells 
we scooped out with our hands to make drinking places, 
were an overflowing blessing to the thirsty. The banks 
were covered with uncivilized verdure very delightful to 
rummage amongst. Ripening Avhortleberries made a blue 
glimmer among the sparse and patchy foliage of the low 
imdershrub which bore them, both making a harmonious 
picture on the russet hemlock " muck " in which they 
grew. The chestnuts were in full bloom, and no pity 
for nutless squirrels next fall deterred us from adding 
some of the longest and most graceful of their plumy 
flowers to our collections. Diervillas out of their com- 
mon yellow uniform, sported lively orange red blossoms 
on the steep declivities. Tw^o dainty species of Apocy- 
num spread their delicate foliage and pink blossoms over 
the hot sand, and among the duskier greenery above. 
The ragged border of hemlocks fringing the top of the 
bank bounded our horizon when we were down by the 
water, but narrow as our range of vision was there was 
plenty to see. The spring flood-tide of bloom was over, 
as well as the fullest flush of the summer flowers, but 
enough yet blossomed to rew^ard research and conti- 
nually whet our appetites for more. The seed growth 
of the deep-woods plants, too, was a continual feast of 
discovery to most of us. Having spent in woods 
like these more summers than I care to count just 
now, this forest growth was well nigh as familiar as 
the foliage in a kitchen garden ; and a tw^o years' resi- 
dence in prairie land had made me hunger and thirst 
for these woods and waters so keenly that I went 

2* 



42 LICHEN TUFTS. 

"maundering" about, greeting my old friends beside 
every log and under every bank. They made fun of 
me, and dubbed me the " Dictionary " that day for the 
unconscious pedantry of mouthing so many jaw-break- 
ing names for innocent little weeds, w^hich were wholly 
unknown to the Greeks w hose language has been appro- 
priated so much in naming them. These hideous names, 
which serve as so many scarecrows to frighten oif lazy 
schoolboys and girls from this most beautiful study the 
green Earth affords, have become as pleasant as house- 
hold words to me, from constant use. In order to learn 
them, I contracted a habit of talking to plants in my 
solitary walks, and calling them by these names, and, 
despite the absurdity of the thing, I continually betrayed 
this habit among my fellow travellers; so I was the 
" Dictionary." Ah, w^ell ! one could be much worse a 
book, if not a less poetical one. 

Elvira took a second lesson in shooting to-day, and so 
far improved upon her practice at the mosquito hunt of 
the day before, that she brought down a woodpecker from 
the top of a hemlock, much to her own astonishment. 

When the boat landed us on the right bank of the 
stream a few miles below, it was at one of those river- 
side fountains which gushed out in the shade of a green 
tliough fallen tree, which was bathing its head, with its 
"terms inverted," in the Allegany. Near this the 
Indians had made a footing in the precipitous bank, up 
which we climbed, and after a half hour's reconnoi- 
tring, selected a spot overlooking the river, and went to 
building our camp. We encamped under a beech tree, 
using a stout horizontal limb, which stretched toAvards the 
river, for the ridge pole of our wigwam, supporting its 



INTO THE WOODS. 43 

outer end with a stake. Against this ridge pole we 
leaned boards and slabs, which were plentiful in this 
vicinity, and here we had a picturesque camp, opening 
riverward and commanding a prospect so lovely m its 
rural simplicity and quiet that our artist took posses- 
sion of it immediately. We were on the outside of a 
curve, just above Jemmison's Bend, and could see a 
long panorama of inverted hills and woods done in crys- 
tal far up and doTvm the " Beautiful River "—for the 
Senecas continue the name Ohio, or rather Ohe-yu, or 
" Beautiful River," up to the very head of the Allegany, 
which is a name they never applied to the river. 

I have heard, though I do not know on what autho- 
rity, that Allegany signifies " Head of the mighty." If 
it does, it is in allusion to the mountains of that name, 
from which so many rivers rise. 

The river near our camp afforded us a delightful op- 
portunity for swimming and playing in the water — a 
pastime never out of date — an enjoyment new every sum- 
mer. The Seneca children seemed to be amphibious, as 
though they were akin to porpoises. One little fellow 
played riding on horseback, by sitting astride a floating 
slab and propelling it with his feet. 

A descendant of Mary Jemmison, the "white woman," 
lived a quarter of a mile off, across the river, and his 
family crossed the river in a log canoe, whk;h lay at the 
landing, several times a day, to get cold drinking water 
at the spring under our bank. A woman with two 
children came oftenest ; and it was a marvellous sight 
to see her send that narrow craft as straight as an arrow 
across the rapid stream. She used a setting pole, and 
stood up in the middle of the canoe, and would give it 



44 LICHEN TUFTS. 

such an impetus before it reached the deep channel 
where her pole was too short to touch bottom, that it 
would dart across the swift current without perceptibly 
swerving in its course. The gentlemen of our party tried 
to learn the trick, ,but bungled and failed every time, to 
the great amusement of the skilful boatwoman, whose 
clear musical laugh it was worth being laughed at to 
hear. 

The next day was Saturday, and as we had a written 
invitation to a grand Sabbath-School picnic a few miles 
down the river, our company gladly availed themselves 
of the opportunity of seeing the people together. 

The old rulership of the chiefs is superseded by a 
republican form of government, and the picturesqueness 
of manner and attire are passing away. They are 
obliged to be civilized in self-defence. If the w^hite 
people about them were not the most barbarous of their 
race, the Indians would probably j^rize civilization more. 
As it is, the exemplifications of enlightenment they are 
in the habit of associating with, are not such as present 
very powerful attractions to an unvitiated taste. At a 
world's fair of scalliwags, I think some of the white 
scamps on the river in the Reservation would take the 
premium for being the most worthless, drunken, foul- 
mouthed blackguards possible to find. Added to this 
chronic nuisance which empties itself into the river from 
Ellicottville and the other towns near the Reservation, 
especially on Sundays, to fish and play the ruffian or 
ribald clown generally, there is a periodical nuisance of 
a more business-like and less idle character, but which 
is morally no better for the Senecas. All the up-river 
lumber region uses the river for a market road, and 



IXTO THE WOODS. * 45 

whenever there is a freshet of sufficient magnitude to 
make the stream navigable for rafts, which happens 
twice or thrice a year, the region below is deluged with 
lumbermen, w^ho at home are not generally the best 
possible specimens of Christian civilization, but who 
leave their greatest stock of good behavior at home 
when they go down the river. They are oftener than 
otherwise rough, profane, and drunken. Now the rail- 
road, wdth its degraded hangers-on, crosses the Reserva- 
tion, and runs near it for many miles. There are, 
however, some permanent residents not to be reckoned 
in this category. On asking a Seneca if our baggage 
would be safe alone at our camp, he said, " I am afraid 
not. The Indians and the neighbors (the white resi- 
dents just mentioned) won't touch any thing, but there 
are some Irishmen and white fellows over here that 
hadn't better find them alone." However, we left them 
alone more than once, and lost nothing, so it is sup- 
posable that only the Indians and the "neighbors" found 
them exposed. 

Mr. Purse, who invited us to the festival, besides being 
President of the Seneca Nation at that time, is a Baptist 
preacher, a Sunday-School teacher, plays in the brass 
band, teaches singing school, translates hymns and sets 
them to music, and sometimes composes both — supervises 
all the printing done in the language — is the prosecutor 
of those who sell whiskey to the Senecas, makes speeches 
to the whites in good English — and is now engaged 
with some three or four others in translating the New 
Testament into their tongue. In his wild younger days 
he travelled over the greater part of North America 
with a band of musicians, and now seems to be making 



46 LICHEN TUFTS. 

the best use of all he learned in his peregrinations. 
Appreciating the advantages of true civilization, as well 
as the difficulty of bringing them home to his people 
where they are, and as they are, by any means hitherto 
used, he has now on foot a new project partly executed, 
for the more thorough instruction of a part, at least, of 
the Senecas. He has selected thirty young people of 
both sexes, whom he desires to get into Christian families 
in decent neighborhoods, to learn the arts and ways of 
civilized life, and to get a good school education besides. 
He has already got places for several, and hopes, by 
sending out his people to learn, to do what a few teachers 
among them never could accomplish. He hopes they 
may be able to maintain themselves by their labor, and 
thus be no expense either to the whites or themselves. 
Those already out are doing well. 

The white " neighbors " mingled in the festivities, and 
helped get up the refreshments, and the whole affair 
went off swimmingly ; but with the exception of dusky 
faces and the strange language of the dusky speakers, 
it was like any Sunday-School celebration, animated by 
a brass band and a feast. True, the gala dresses were 
somewhat in aboriginal taste, though not in pattern, 
but it was as civilized as anybody's celebration. 

Mr. Purse, whose Indian name I wish I could remem- 
ber, was, of course, one of the principal orators of the 
day, and spoke in his grave, earnest, energetic way, 
that well nigh made his Seneca tongue intelligible to 
Yankee ears. The closing honors were awarded to our 
captain, whose speech seemed to please the Indians as 
much as the Indians had pleased us, one delighted old 
man asserting in very bad English, that this was " The 



INTO THE WOODS. 47 

best speak he ever did heard ! " How much of it he 
understood is problematical. Owing to their apprecia- 
tion of that speech, however, our friend was invited to 
preach to them the next day, and had the offer of a 
canoe to take him to meeting. Of course he went. I 
rather think he would have done it if he had never done 
such a thing before, for the poetic inspiration of the 
place and people seemed to endow him with the spirit 
to do his best without any trouble. 

Before morning, however, there were two considera- 
ble dampers cast upon our enthusiasm. The first was 
the discovery of a complicated sectarian feud existing 
among them ; the nation being divided into the " Old 
Style" and the "Christian" parties, and the latter 
being subdivided into the Presbyterian and Baptist 
parties. 

The second damper was a shower in the night, which 
put our frail wigwam to a test it could not bear. Even 
the Baptist portion of our party had to put up with 
being sprinkled that night. It did not rain in the morn- 
ing, so, as we did not wish to appear to take sides in 
their feuds, half of us went to the Presbyterian meeting 
close by the camp, and the other half went down to the 
picnic ground among the Baptists. 

After church we had a taste of the good manners of 
some stray Ellicottvillians, who were fishing in the 
river. Some of them were in boats and some on shore, 
and two of the latter came tearing through our premises, 
and swung themselves down the bank by the ridge pole 
of our house, pulling the mansion down after them, just 
as it began to rain again in good earnest. 

We didn't like it, but we couldn't help it, and so we 



48 LICHEN TUFTS. 

ran about looking for shelter, like a nest of ants whose 
home has been unroofed by taking away the flat stone 
they had encamped under. Back in the woods a piece, 
just in the edge of a raspberry patch, stood a log cabin 
covered with boards, unfinished, and never used. There 
was a hole cut for a door, but no door in it, and a hole 
in the roof for smoke to go out, but no chimney. The 
spaces between the logs were un chinked, and there was 
no floormg. A stray cow seemed to have lodged there 
occasionally, but we removed all evidence of her former 
presence, and strewed the floor thickly wdth hemlock 
boughs, and having removed ourselves into it, bag and 
baggage, dried ourselves before a roaring fire built 
under that hole in the roof. It rained all that night and 
the next day, and made quite a little freshet, dirtying 
the clear Allegany sadly, and washing away our springs. 
The floodwood came down at such a rate that we could 
not cross the river, and a projected visit to the aged 
Patriarch Blacksnake, the nephew of the renowned Red 
Jacket, had to be foregone. That was an irreparable 
omission, for within the year he died, at the age of one 
hundred and twenty-three years. The oldest of the 
nation now living, can remember him as a middle-aged 
man when they were little children. 

As I said before, the gourmands eschewed our com- 
pany, but for all that, as we were neither spiders, nor 
snakes, nor angels, we had to eat occasionally, and as our 
cupboard grew as bare as Mother Hubbard's, we began 
to think about converting raw materials into eatables — 
for even savages cooh^ and the utmost simplicity of living 
we could attain to would not make Allegany mountain 
trout eatable without fire. I believe I am aboriginal 



INTO THE WOODS. 49 

enough, and hate dishwashing badly enough to make me 
satisfied to roast my fish on a stick and eat it from a 
leaf, and then throw away my gridiron and plate to save 
washing. Thus extremes should meet, for I would at 
once be as simple as an anchorite, and as luxurious as 
the Emperor of Japan, whose dishes are broken as soon 
as used, so that nobody else shall profane them by eat- 
ing after him, nor he suffer the indignity of eating twice 
from the same dish. But my companions thought that 
neither the august prestige of the potentate's example, 
nor the thriftless laziness of mine, could keep the fish 
thus roasted from tasting smoky, nor add the desired 
flavor of salt and butter, so there must be so much of 
the abjured arts of civilization used as sufficed to fry 
fish. Mrs. A. and Susie had provided all sorts of pro- 
vender, even down to pots of butter and bags of salt, 
but nobody had brought a frying-pan, nor eVen a " dish 
kettle," which one of our ingenious countryw^omen has 
averred is convertible to every culinary purpose what- 
ever, from a coffee-pot to an oven. Some of our Seneca 
neighbors had sent us some peas, and here were peas to 
boil and fish to fry, and a pint tin basin and a self-sealing 
fruit can, holding a quart, w^ere our utmost resources. 
With a stove there would have been little difficulty, but 
it rained pitilessly, and our fire was a huge heap of 
burning w^ood on the ground, under that corresponding 
huge hole in the roof, which let out all the smoke which 
went straight up, and let in all the rain which fell straight 
down upon it. The wind, too, took an occasional whim 
of introducing variety in the camp, by varying the posi- 
tion of the column of smoke and fire from its perpendi- 
cular to all sorts of angles between that and the 



50 LICHEN TUFTS. 

horizontal, and sometimes whirling it into a spiral 
shape, which however pretty to look at, took up as 
inconvenient and uncivil an amount of room, and was 
something less approachable than a crinoline in a 
waltz. 

Our captain had taken advantage of the morning rain, 
when trout like to be caught and ahvays bite, and had 
come home with a fine string of them, and was nothing 
loth to stand drying his bedraggled length before the 
log heap ; but as he stood looking forlorn enough, a 
bright idea was working under the touzeled exterior of 
his caput. He went out and cut a slender beech sap- 
ling, some inch and a half through, and stood up gravely 
again, w^hittling industriously at his stick. Off fell the 
leaf-laden branches, hissing and snapping into the fire, 
as he lopped them away, and finally the sapling seemed 
a club about eight feet long, split at one end. Into this 
split, the edge of the pint basin was insinuated, and held 
by the elastic wood, like Milo's fingers in the log trap 
he caught himself in, and lo ! there was a Lilliputian 
frying-pan with a Brobdignag handle, and the biggest 
Professor from our Alma Mater transformed himself 
into the chef cuisinier of our expedition. In went some 
butter and a coiled up fish, and our extempore skillet 
was held over the fire by a muscular arm, and watched 
by a metaphysical eye, as though it was the manliest 
occupation in the world ! 

Our captain is a good surveyor, and would make a 
good engineer they say — is a good mathematician and a 
good logician — he teaches well and he preaches well — is 
six feet high — has big whiskers, and a bass voice — and 
added to all this he improvises frying-pans, and fries fish 



INTO THE WOODS. 51 

capitally. And he looks just as dignified and philosophic 
doing that as at anything I ever saw him do. He forbad 

our calling him '' Professor A " fifty times, but we 

forgot it every time, and he seemed just as professional 
in one place and plight as another. He might stand ever 
so long en dishabille with the water dripping out of his 
red flannel shirt, and upon his head from the leaky roof, 
and fry trout one at a time for our breakfast, and we 
would call him " Professor" in good faith while he was 
at it. It was as good as forty lectures on the dignity of 
labor. I wondered then, more than ever, where people 
ever get the absurd notion of talking about " refined" 
and "vulgar," or "masculine and "feminine" employ- 
ments. It sounds as ridiculous as the French way of 
calling knives masculine and forks feminine. My knives 
are no more masculine than my forks. Elvira's shooting 
was as feminine as her curls, and the Professor's cooking 
as manly as his beard. Susie was as lady-like when she 
washed up our scanty dinner service in the frying-pan, 
as when she played and sang in her mother's parlor, and 
our captain never was more a gentleman in the pulpit 
or on the rostrum than when making that frying-pan. 
I believe he could darn his own stockings, sew on his 
own buttons, or perhaps possibly he might even sell 
tape behind a counter, or sit a la Turc on a shopboard 
and stitch jackets, and not bate one jot of his manhood. 
I exulted as I thought how those brawny hands had car- 
ried that massive head up from a poor and obscure place 
by their power to work, and thought that so long as the 
" mud-sills" of the Bridge of State are made of such 
right royal, and at the same time such stubbornly demo- 
cratic timber as this, the Bridge cannot sink — no, not 



52 LICHEN TUFTS. 

even under the weight of a "latter-day" President, 
Cabinet, and two whole Houses of Congress I But here 
I've got clear into both Houses of Congress and our 
peas ain't cooked yet ! There's velocity for you ! I 
think I might help Mr. Field and his corps about that 
troublesome Atlantic Telegraph ! But as my efforts in 
that line can hardly be appreciated yet, and as I can 
prove a capacity for cooking peas, I will leave that cable 
in its sea-salt pickle, and its owners in their monetary 
pickle, and tell you how I dulled our poet's jack-knife, 
scraping the cement off the old tomato can, in order to 
make a dinner pot of it. Somebody says that kind of 
cement is poison — the which I don't know — but it is 
uncomely and unsavory, so it had to be scraped and 
melted and scoured off, and then when the peas were 
put in, and the lid on, we had neither bail to hang it by, 
nor handle to hold it by, nor stove to set it on. But we 
did not mind that, for Necessity, the mother of Inven- 
tion, had several of her children with her in our camj). 
The Professor could make frying-pans and the Poet could 
manufacture shovels. A stray clap-board, gleaned from 
a pile of drift-wood by the river, was duly hewn and 
whittled into shape and did duty as a shovel, and was, 
from a respectful distance, thrust into our little volcano, 
and robbing it of a pile of coals, our extempore dinner 
pot was set thereon, and cooked away with profound 
satisfaction. 

The Europeans laugh at the American propensity for 
whittling, and no doubt it is ridiculous sometimes, but 
it is a natural consequence of plenty of wood and few 
tools, and our experience proved jack-knives to be a 
great institution. 



INTO THE WOODS. 53 

We would ask you to dinner if you would not be 
scandalized at the scantiness of our dinner service. 
One table-knife and fork, three jack-knives and a pen- 
knife, two spoons and two plates, and, it must be con- 
fessed, our dinner-pot and frying-pan added to our two 
tin drinking cups, was the whole. It would have been 
better for each to have carried a private spoon in a side- 
pocket, but we didn't think of it, and so we waited for 
each other when we had " spoon victuals," and at 
other times did what our ancestors did before forks 
were invented — used five-pronged implements like those 
Mother Eve managed with native grace in the bowers 
of Paradise. 

Nobody can tell till he has tried it, how much fun 
there is in doing without things. It is really astonish- 
ing how many things people can do without, when they 
can't help it. Altogether the merriest meals I ever 
helped to eat, were thus merry not on account of what 
we had^ but on account of what we had not. Some 
absurd and irremediable omission provokes mirth, where 
people are not silly enough to feel chagrined at the 
poverty or the blunder. If we had made our outfit 
perfect, and had forgotten nothing, we should not have 
had so many things to laugh at, and should probably 
have enjoyed it less. 

Next day the heavens "stopped crying," and we 
went up the river in a wagon, and slept in a house on 
a floor that night. The air seemed very close after the 
airy chambers we had been occupying. 

There is a "Rock City" on a ridge of hill near 
Great Valley, where conglomerate rocks are piled 
many feet high for several miles in length. Here in a 



64 LICHEN TUFTS. - 

crevice of the rocks part of our company encamped 
the ensuing night. Feathery ferns and mosses tufted 
the rocks and trees, but the shade was too deep for any 
luxuriance of undergrowth. Some of us got a bit of a 
ducking in crossing Great Valley Creek to get there. 
The bridge was gone, and the water so deep that it 
floated our wagon-box and wetted our bedding. It got 
dried, however, and none of us got drowned. 

Here my western enemy, the ague, which had tor- 
mented me through Illinois " and back again," like the 
champion in the old game, who couldn't succeed in 
dodging the old witch on the way to Bileybright, came 
on with double force and drove me home. When I lay 
sick and fevered by the Mississippi, drinking . warm 
wiggling water, I felt as though the cool springs and 
clear air of these hills would cure me at once — but it 
took more than one week. 

On my way to the depot I visited one more curi- 
osity, and one yet unexplained. This was the " breath- 
ing well." It looks at the top like any ordinary well 
dug for domestic purposes in a farm-house door-yard, 
and this was its original design, but after digging some 
thirty feet they came to a strong current of air, but no 
water. They dug no further, but put a sort of pen- 
stock in the top of the well, with a large tin whistle 
fitted into it, which answers every purpose of a barome- 
ter. When the air is light the current rushes out of the 
well with great force, blowing away anything which is 
laid over the hole, and blowing the whistle like a young 
steam engine. If the air without is heavy, the well 
draws in its breath with the same energy. 

The cause of this phenomenon is unknown, being 



INTO THE WOODS. 55 

theoretically supposed to be owing to some hypothetical 
cavern down there somewhere. It is worth the investi- 
gation of the curious. 

My companions pursued their way to visit the new 
coal-mines a few miles south of here in Pennsylvania, 
but as a true historian's tale must stop where his know- 
ledge does, I must pause here. If you are as sorry as I 
was, I am glad. 



THE NATURE CURE.— FOR THE BODY. 

I ONCE heard an enthusiastic Geologist say, that when 
he was a confirmed and almost hopeless invalid, he took 
daily doses of the Tertiary Formation for one season, 
and found himself well. He had been a close student, 
and had contracted an inveterate dyspepsia, which, he 
was told, exercise would cure. His first attempt was a 
signal failure. Every day he started for a walk, in the 
spirit of swallowing a dose of pills, and walked along 
absorbed in his books, or else thinking about his ail- 
ments, saying to himself continually, "This is to cure 
the dyspepsia ; this rod is to leave the dyspepsia one 
more rod behind ; so much exercise vs. so much dys- 
pepsia," &G. &G. But he found after a six weeks' trial, 
that giving his distresses an airing only increased them, 
and the more he tired himself, trying to walk ofi" his 
indigestion, the more it would not be walked off. 

A Naturalist spent a few days with him, and his 
thoughts became keenly interested in the earth-history 
recorded beneath his feet. With the whole energy of 
his excitable temperament he threw himself into the 
study of Geology, and in pursuing the thread of its 
revelations among the hills and along watercourses, 
'down wells, and vl^ precipices, his aches and ails 
vanished. 

The keen out-of-door interest he had gained, carried 
out his thoughts from the sphere of their chronic habits, 
and with every breath of air that filled his lungs, the 



THE NATURE CURE. — ^FOR THE BODY. 67 

now bounding pulses poured the once creeping blood 
into their vitalizing laboratory. 

The pulsations of the aroused soul stirred the half 
stagnant currents of the body, and renewed their life in 
the free air. His disease was lost off and forgotten. 
He no longer thought of inspecting his tongue at the look- 
ing glass, nor feeling his pulse, nor keeping an account 
of the variations of his appetite. He had something far 
more interesting to think of, and the added relish it 
gave to the minutiae of life was enjoyed without analy- 
sis or reflection. He did not ask of himself how much 
such or such an organ had been benefited, in order to 
enable it to afford him such and such a pleasure more 
than usual. He had always led some such forced and 
methodical existence before, but now he led a spontane- 
ous life, and the long dormant seeds of many joys began 
to swell and sprout within him. He was no longer the 
pasteboard globe revolving on pivots within its wooden 
horizon and brazen meridian, but a planet rolling through 
space, with infinite blue on every hand, and the kindly 
influence of many moons and stars drawing him in an 
eccentric and wavering orbit around his central sun. 
How could he remember to have the dyspepsia then ? 
Half the diseases of mankind would get well of them- 
selves if they were not so petted and thought about. 
Many a common cold has been worried into consump- 
tion and the grave, by constant attention and apprehen- 
sion. We are perpetually warned against being careless 
or negligent of our physical disorders, and the warning 
is sometimes needed ; but it as often happens that the 
continual reminding us of it aggravates the difficulty, as 
it happens that care alleviates it. 

3 



58 LICHEN TUFTS. 

We generally find what we look for in this world, and 
in this field as truly as anywhere. If we look into every 
coughing fit for the seeds of bronchitis or consumption, 
we will find them after a while, and if we watch them 
incessantly to see them germinate, by and by sure 
enough, they will begin to grow, when, if we had not 
used our anxiety and attention as a sort of hot-house , 
and forcing-bed for them, they never would have vege- 
tated. I have known a spinal disease to be induced by 
constantly thinking about and expecting it, and daily 
looking over one's shoulders into a glass to detect a cur- 
vature. People go mad, sometimes, for fear they ^vdll 
be crazy. 

They say that Pan, the genius of the woods, is dead, 
and that his mistress, Nature, went out of fashion long 
ago, and is quite obsolete in polite circles now ; yet if 
there is Q^pathy in the world, worthy of trust, it is that 
taught in their school. 

Hydropathy, as practised by ISTaiades and Undines, 
must be delightful in warm weather, but the difficulty 
of finding the physicians at home when you call, makes 
its efficacy uncertam. But Pan, who may have died, 
and come to life again, for aught I know, is alive now, 
and always at home. Kill him ever so many times, he 
won't stay dead. He has more lives than a cat, and 
what is better, he has the power of transferring his 
vital tenacity to his patients. He is the greatest of 
physicians, although mythology says nothing about it, 
and though his bill is not the longest. He has other 
modes of advertising the superiority of their mode of 
cure, than making magnificent charges. There is no 
quackery about the Nature Cure. It never orders nau- 



THE NATURE CURE. FOR THE BODY. 59 

seous poisons to be forced into the stomach, in the 
expectation that they will find some road to the liver or 
pancreas, or other ungetatable places, when they are out 
of order. To be sure, other doctors do it, but that does 
not hinder the venomous medicine from finding the 
wrong road just as easily as the right one, and blunder- 
ing into the wrong gland, or some other place, and go 
to curing what is not sick, just as fast as what is. 

This is a difierent system. The man who took the 
tertiary strata did not swallow them, though he took 
them in ether — a sort of ether that keeps best without 
bottling up or corking. Yet it was an internal apphca- 
tion, acting with great force on the brain and all the 
vital organs, although so agreeable to take, that it soon 
became more delightful than any feast, the only dis- 
agreeable results being the fatigue consequent upon so 
much exercise. But what sweet sleep followed those 
days of toil, and what pleasant dreams grew out of the 
invigorating atmosphere he breathed all day long ! 

An invalid who does not feel quite equal to the task 
of carrying a stone hammer and a basket of rocks over 
the hills, as a sanitary measure, can of course take a 
difierent prescription. For instance, I have known a 
professional man, addicted to liver complaint and other 
bad habits, take half an acre of cabbages with excellent 
efiect. 

Another, ,who ought to have sued his ancestors for 
damages for imposing on him a poor, rickety constitution, 
contrived to renovate and make it quite passably useful, 
by the application of five-and-tAventy varieties of rose- 
bushes, with pinks and geraniums ad libitum. 

That this mode of cure is always accessible, at least 



60 LICHEN TUFTS. 

to all country people, is one of its chief recommenda- 
tions. Skilled physicians of any other school are so 
often migetatable, that the children of poverty must 
submit to be experimented upon by tyros and quacks, 
or go unattended through sickness, unless they have 
faith to try the out-of-door treatment, which, in a great 
majority of cases, if taken soon enough, will perform a 
cure ; and if it fails, and the patient dies, he has at least 
the satisfaction of dying a natural death, without the 
assistance of the Faculty. 

There is much truth in the old proverb, " An ounce 
of prevention is worth a pound of cure." All phy- 
sicians of every school will say, that any disease is much 
easier cured, if taken in time, than if deferred as long 
as possible. Some diseases of the most formidable cha- 
racter — contagious, hideous, and often fatal — may be 
wholly averted, if proper steps be taken before exposure 
to infection ; and greatly modified after it, so as to be 
neither frightful nor dangerous, if properly treated from 
the moment of their inception — as for instance the 
small-pox. Let it alone, and it will kill or disfigure its 
victim. Vaccinate or diet, and he will come out whole 
and sound in most cases. We claim no miraculous 
power of restoration is to be found, even in the purest 
air of the mountain-tops ; but a vigorous preventive, 
and a salutary, healing influence for those inclined to 
disease, or already partially ailing, is plentiful and free. 
Mother Nature herself would not take a far-gone con- 
sumptive into her hospital. When a man gets too ill 
to get out of doors, it is too late for him to try that 
method of cure, and often too late for any method to 
do him any good. If you had a friend going to be 



THE NATUEE CUBE. — FOE THE BODY. 61 

hanged, yon wonld not wait until the rope was about 
his neck, before you started to get him reprieved ; but 
when our friends sicken, we think it is time enough to 
do something when they can no longer sit up or eat 
their meals. The wonder is, not that people so often 
die young, but that anybody lives to be old. It exhibits 
an almost incredible tenacity of life, for a sedentary 
person to get well after a fit of illness. 

Divers spasmodic efforts to restore the regime of Na- 
ture in the medical world, have risen and waned, alter- 
nately astonishing the world by their audacity, and amus- 
ing it by their absurdities. But the passion for humbug 
and mock erudition which has always more or less cha- 
racterized this profession, and the fact that it is and has 
been a profession instead of a study, a science, and an 
art, have made these new schools ruin themselves by 
their Brobdignag pretensions and Lilliputian achieve- 
ments. The little fire of truth under this witches' 
cauldron of medicaments and theories, has kept the 
uncanny broth bubbling, and these ephemeral attempts 
at reform have been but the bursting bubbles on its 
surface. 

A European school of Empirics once professed to have 
discovered that the breath of cattle was the most curative 
atmosphere an invalid could inhale, and prescribed in 
certain chronic diseases that the patient should be laid 
on a pallet in front of the feeding racks of the cattle, 
in order to breathe in, and otherwise absorb, the hygi- 
enic odors of the kine. 

People have been sent to the tops of mountains to 
regain the health they might have kept if they had only 
visited the mountain tops on their own feet sooner, 



62 LICHEN TUFTS. 

instead of waiting to use the feet of mules, when their 
own were no longer available. 

They have been sent to the bottom of caverns for the 
nitrous air, that was to heal the lungs that were decay- 
ing because they had never had enough of any sort of 
air. Pale students and professional men who have made 
their offices the ante-rooms to the Court of Death, by 
breathing dust and carbonic acid, and the fumes of ink 
and tobacco, from one year's end to the other, run under 
ground in Mammoth cave to escape yet a little longer 
the final putting under ground, which they have not 
dreaded enough to avoid sooner. 

Merchants^ from whose abused nostrils the everlasting 
smells of the shop and store seldom have a chance to 
subside, take costly pilgrimages to far off springs, to 
drink abominable waters, to undo the evil that never 
would have befallen them if they had breathed more 
clean air, and drunk more pure water, as they went along. 

Ladies who have squeezed the breath of life out of 
their lungs, and admitted the chills of death to their 
bare arms and shoulders, and might-as-well-be bare feet, 
go into the sea brine with the lobsters, after the health 
that grows thriftily in the kitchen garden and on every 
hillside. 

Thrifty housewives who fry their vital juices put 
over the cooking stove, and fill their lungs with evapo- 
rated dinners, and their stomachs with indigestible 
delicacies, generally take to patent medicines and kin- 
dred abominations to purge them of their unnecessary 
ailments. They, seldomer than any other class, think 
they can afford time, or have strength to take any part in 
the Nature cure the others try to get at. 



THE NATUEE CURE. — FOR THE BODY. 63 

•I sometimes think women like to be sick, tliey take 
such capital care to destroy any health they may have 
inherited. They think frail health is interesting. Don't 
the poets write delightfully maudlin verses about beauti- 
ful consumptives coughing away their forlorn existence 
in the most sentimental manner possible ? Romantic 
young ladies, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, feel 
complimented at having some simpleton insinuate that 
theirs is the radiant eye and liectic flush of incipient 
phthisis. Health is vulgar. No fashionable lady will 
own to so prosaic a condition. Did you ever hear one 
say right heartily, without any modification of ifs or 
huts^ that she was in excellent health ? Not she ! If 
nothing under the sun ails her, she will sooner improvise 
a pain in her side, or her head, or her little finger, or 
her great toe, rather than be supposed to have no ail- 
ment whatever. She thinks it j^rettier to be sick ; and 
for fear she might be well if she let herself alone, she 
exposes her extremities to the vicissitudes of the atmo- 
sphere, and crushes in her vitals with jean and whale- 
bones, and loads the lower viscera and vertebrae with a 
young camel's load of dry goods and hardware to drag 
down her life and impede locomotion. Of course no 
animal thus loaded, hoppled, cramped, and exposed, can 
apply the nature cure without altering her habits and 
defying fashion, and this few women are brave enough 
to do. She prides herself on being a coward (" timid " 
is the euphemistic phrase), for that is almost as necessary 
as ill health to make a lady interesting. " She might 
as well be out of the world, as out of fashion," and so 
she puts herself out of the world as expeditiously as 
the prevailing mode of suicide prescribes. No matter 



64 UCHEN TUFTS. 

for the Divine command, " Thou shalt not kill I » 
Fashion says, " Kill yourselves and your children by 
slow torture I " and Goddess Fashion is obeyed, and the 
Lord's commandment broken. Murder is a stern word 
with which to confront and aocuse these delicate dames, 
but what less have they done ? If they like not my 
speech, I commend them to the third chapter of the 
poems of the Prophet Isaiah, and pass on. 

Young ladies in their teens, who have resolution 
enough to defy parental advice and authority, and run 
away with some perfumed popinjay, to be " married in 
haste to repent at leisure," have not moral force nor 
physical courage enough to put on a pair of calfskin shoes, 
and a dress short and loose enough to climb hills in with- 
out stepping on the skirts, or gasping for the breath they 
have no room for in their dress waists ; and then, thus 
equipped, to take rambles, and even scrambles, in places 
rough and smooth in pursuit of those objects of beauty 
or curiosity, of scientific or artistic interest, which are 
always accessible in the woods and fields. 

No, indeed! Scientific young ladies are never the 
heroines of novels ! They are absurd and unfashionable, 
and are supposed always to have ragged blue stockings, 
inky fingers, and dowdy hair. They are believed to be 
predestined to be old maids, or the worthless wives of 
victimized husbands, and the slatternly mothers of ne- 
glected children. All the oracles of romance have 
shown that women never take to science or art, except 
from starvation or disappointment. 

I am not going to dispute her prey with Romance, for 
her votaries are too destitute of gumption to be brought 
to their senses by anything short of the sharpest reali- 



THE NATURE CUEE. — ^POR THE BODY. 65 

ties of life, and then it is often too late for them to undo 
the absurd mischiefs they have done to themselves. 

Romance makes the confectionery of life, but whoever 
undertakes to live on sweetmeats must pay the penalty 
of such folly. 

Half the American people are women, or will be, if 
they live long enough, but how is the nation to stand 
alone with so flimsy a "better half" as these women 
make ? The mass of American women work as 
hard or harder than the men, but they accomplish far 
less, because they work at an immense disadvantage. 
Even the women of the country do themselves up in 
such a way that if they w^ere perfect Sampsons they 
could not do much but tire themselves out in trying to 
do. Put Sampson himself in hoops and long skirts, and 
set him to carrying up full pans of milk from the cellar 
dairy room, and see how he would make out. Set him 
to hoeing the kitchen garden, or weeding onion beds, 
and after he had tripped himself up a few times by 
treading on his " flowing, graceful drapery," and after 
thereby ripping it loose from the waist, and tearing and 
muddying it in sundry places, see if he wouldn't swear, 
or " think swear " at least. If he had had on a long- 
shouldered dress, and shoulder braces, when he met the 
lion, I'm thinking the bees might have found another 
hive than the lion's body, unless the lion had worn cor- 
sets too, in which case the man might have killed him. 

Suppose you send him out in a lady's rig to do an 
errand, in a high wind, and see how, with all sails set, he 
could make headway against the storm. Let him feel 
all sorts of things flapping, scourging, entangling, twist- 
ing, jerking, snapping, and dragging away at every part 

3* 



66 LICHEN TUFTS. 

of him, and he would cry out, like Cain, that his punish- 
ment was greater than he could bear. Call woman the 
" weaker vessel" indeed ! If she were not stronger than 
Sampson, and more patient than Job, she could not, and 
would not submit to the fatigues and inconveniences of 
such habits, and if she were not sillier than a goose she 
would not be the slave of raiment that she is. 

But what with fashions, and fashion-plate magazine 
literature, and customs and prejudice, it will be hard 
work to induce young women, who are the very class 
who 'need it most, to take that out-door exercise that 
their health and highest intelligence demands. 

The assertion that the highest intelligence needs exer- 
cise of the body in fresh air, in order for its develop- 
ment, may be disputed. Those whose idea of intellec- 
tuality are all connected with pallor and leanness will 
cite all manners of cripples and invalids, to show how 
energetically the mind may work in a disordered body. 
I know that Scott and Byron were lame, but I know, 
too, that they walked and swam as few sound men do. 
I know that Elizabeth Browning is feeble, and that she 
wrote better when she was well, and that her sea-side 
rambles have left their impress on her poetry. Char- 
lotte Bronte inherited a consumption, and was " stunted" 
by starvation in childhood, but if she had not habitu- 
ally taken longer walks over the bleak Yorkshire moors 
than an American lady would think possible, we should 
never have had Jane Eyre, nor heard of its author. 
Harriet Martineau, though incurably diseased and deaf, 
has written the best guide-book for the wild and rugged 
lake scenery amid which she lives that has ever been 
written. Because, not only was she more gifted than 



THE NATURE CURE. FOR THE BODY. 67 

other guide-book authors, but she was practically more 
familiar with what she describes. 

These are the sick ones, but the well ones are in the 
majority. Most sickly geniuses die before they arrive 
at such celebrity, or indeed before they get out of their 
teens. Think of Bayard Taylor or Ida Pffeifer hobbling 
round the world on crutches, or scaring the sea nymphs 
of Pacific or Indian seas, with the ghostly pallor of their 
dyspeptic visages, or the hectic gleam of sunken eyes ! 
Imagine Banvard, or Church, or Rosa Bonheur painting 
the Father of Waters, the Heart of the Andes, or the 
Horse Fair from luxurious carriages, in embroidered 
slippers and kid gloves ! If Hiram Powers had remained 
an indoor man in a Cincinnati warehouse, or Harriet 
Hosmer a parlor ornament or kitchen utensil in her 
Massachusetts home, do you think that we should have 
ever had the Greek Slave or Zenobia ? 

It took a sea-side cave for a study, and an audience 
of waves, to train a Demosthenes of old, and a hunter's 
life among Virginia's hills to make a Patrick Henry of 
modern times. The life of the wandering " flower-girl 
of the Boulevards " ripened into Rachel, the Queen of 
Tragedy ; and how much had the wild air of the Polar 
region to do in developing the gifts of that Swedish 
song-bird, Jenny Lind ? 

It takes a well oxygenized blood to stimulate the 
brain to healthy action. Carbonic acid mixed with the 
purple currents of life, does not agree with the nucleus 
of the nervous system. Genius itself must succumb to 
half-vitalized blood and a vitiated atmosphere. The 
" midnight lamp " addles more brains than it enlightens. 
There is philosophy in the old notion that moonlight 



68 LICHEN TUFTS. 

crazes people, that is, if they stay awake of nights to 
look at it. Nature forbids over activity as well as sloth, 
and haunting about at uncanny hours, as well as staying 
shut up at all hours. 

These two absurd notions, that it is not pretty to be 
robust and rosy, and that it is pretty to try to superin- 
duce beauty or genius by making owls of ourselves in 
turning night into day, or by rat-like inhabiting unven- 
tilated and unwholesome quarters, seem, in stating, too 
ridiculous and foolish to require a rebuff or refutation ; 
and yet there are multitudes of our fellow-creatures and 
creaturesses acting upon them daily. 

Why else do our ruddy, stalwart farmer boys seek 
to be doctors and clerks, as though goods and drugs 
smelled sweeter than fresh mould or clover sod ? They 
think white hands measuring tape and assorting fancy 
buttons, or fingering deranged pulses, are much more 
stylish and " genteel," than honest sunbrowned hands. 
They think a varnished and useless cane a more interest- 
ing and elegant occupant of their digits than rake or 
plough handles would be. And why else do fat and rosy 
young ladies drink vinegar and eat chalk and tea- 
grounds to diminish their flesh and color, if they do 
not think health and strength undesirable? Or why 
do would-be geniuses keep late hours, and roll their 
eyes ominously, if they do not receive these notions ? 

We may ignore this large and increasing class of 
dunces, and treat only of those we generally think of as 
the more sensible class, who are the vigorous doers of 
the land, and yet we shall not find them obeying the 
laws of life any better than the others. They may 
plead the excuse that they are wearing out for some 



THE NATURE CUKE. — FOR THE BODY. 69 

purpose, and not from sheer folly ; but I know not that 
the Divine command, "Thou shalt not kill !" makes any 
exceptions in favor of those who work themselves to 
death. 

Mankind seem not to have learned that however 
much the body may bear of abuse, it is the worse for 
every ill thing done to it. A man may be sick and get 
well again, yet that illness has shortened his life. He 
expends his health recklessly, and says that he is strong, 
and can bear the strain of his unnatural living; but 
though the machinery may endure " by reason of 
strength even to fourscore years," the fresh vigor of life 
that might have been retained, has gone long before 
that, and a man of seventy now, is older than Adam 
was at six hundred. 

Even wise men say that the times demand a rapidity 
of action which cannot be sustained except by unnatural 
stimulus and expenditure of vital energy. The spirit 
of the times demands that we should hurry ourselves 
to death, eating, drinking, sleeping, and working, with 
a deadly activity, which prevents any of these things 
being done thoroughly. 

Why this scrambling haste ? Have you not time to 
live well while you are about it ? We Americans are 
in such a desperate hurry we have not time even to 
chew our dinners before they are swallowed. We can't 
wait for the cars to stop before we jump upon the plat- 
form, nor wait for the steamboat to be moored before 
we leap across a nice place in which to drown, in order 
to get on board or on shore. We count it wasted time 
to do slowly what it is possible to do rapidly even to 
live. The deliberate philosophy has few votaries among 



70 ' LICHEN TUFTS. 

our countrymen. Because man is not a ruminating ani- 
mal, he seems to think he needs no time for chewing any- 
thing but gum or tobacco, and these he chews as he runs. 

To move leisurely along the ways of existence, in 
order to let the experiences of life have full time to 
mature their proper fruit in the character, is considered 
too slow for the Age ; and so this double high pressure 
engine Age drives everybody as if life were a general 
racecourse, w^here he who gets through quickest wins 
the stakes. Few of us like even slow, solemn, and 
grand music ; a waltz or quickstep better pleases us. 

All our inventions are for hurrying up the processes 
known before, or contriving more rapid ones to super- 
sede them; and we partake of the character of our 
inventions. We cannot wait even for hides to be tanned 
into leather by the tedious processes of the old time, 
but rot them by more rapid and less substantial and effica- 
cious methods. It is the same with most of our fabrics. 
Dispatch, rather than durability and excellence, is the 
prevailmg idea in the manufacture of everything from 
college Baccalaureates to shoe pegs. 

We have thus created a false and flimsy taste among 
us, which, from having few substantial things which 
would endure the wear and tear of time, has made us 
come to hke the incessant change ; and if we do happen 
to have anything last beyond the ephemeral existence 
of its contemporaries, we get tired of it, and demolish it 
on purpose. People get tired of durable garments, — 
have had them so long they are sick of them. They 
get out of conceit of beautiful houses which have out- 
lasted the style in vogue when they were built, and pull 
down the excellent old house only because it is out of 



THE NATURE CURE. FOR THE BODY. ^1 

fashion, and build another not as good but more fashion- 
able, in its place. 

Even old men and women are out of fashion, and if 
there is now and then one, they are the odd exceptions 
and not the rule. The unavoidable evil, when it does 
come, is concealed as far as possible by all manner of 
arts and affectations, as though old age were no longer 
honorable. 

Thus we have destroyed our faculty of veneration by 
destroying what is venerable among us. As we measure 
age, our nation itself will soon be old and in its dotage, 
and must make way for some newer style of government, 
or some old style come round new again, as our styles of 
dress are renewed. 

This absurd and destructive racing system must either 
rush us into this and other undesirable results and 
catastrophes, or be abated and cooled off, and taught to 
go slower. So long as we are proud of our rapidity 
there is little hope of mending it. We must meet some 
overwhelming disaster or disgrace, to humiliate us, if 
we will learn wisdom from nothing but experience. If 
nothing but rushing into the gap of an open draw^bridge 
will' convince our fast engineers that the car of state 
has no wings, why we must have a general crash, as on 
our railroads. 

But those of us who love smooth waters and quiet 
scenes, can at least set before our fast countrymen and 
women the dangers of haste, and the open and inviting 
fields of health and recreation, where the overtasked 
and broken down may regain in fresh and quiet pur- 
suits, that strength they have destroyed by their over 
hasty living. 



*I2 UCHEN TUFTS. 

It is pitiful to see the pale and hollow cheeks, and the 
languid and drooping figures, of so many of our young 
men and women whose vital energies were originally 
sufficient to have carried them bravely on to a green old 
age, if they had not been used up by false living, and 
so left them old and worn out in their prime. There is 
no artificial process of renovation. The decayed teeth 
may be replaced, but the torture of the process will 
leave its pain brand on the face, like a wrinkle of age. 
The grey hair may be dyed, but the white roots will be 
continually showing at the parting. The body's bones 
may be hidden by drapery and wadding, but the sallow 
skin hanging loose upon the skeleton of the hands and 
neck, betrays the waste of life within. The skin may be 
daubed with whiting and paint, only to be a mockery 
without, and a slowly absorbed and deadly poison 
within. A full beard may hide a sunken cheek, but not 
a sunken eye. Cloves and cardamom seeds, and orris 
root or perfumery, may conceal a pestilent breath, but 
not the cough that belongs to it. Poetry may deco- 
rate disease, but can never make it pleasant or beautiful. 

If one can be well, it is morally wrong to be sick. 
We deserve better of ourselves than to murder our 
good bodies that the dear Lord gave us to take care of 
our souls with. If we do it carelessly and ignorantly, 
still the penalty falls upon us. There is a death-penalty 
attached to these physical transgressions, and whoso 
breaks the laws of life is a self-murderer. 

There are things worth dying for, but how many of 
us who transgress the life laws do it in a cause worth 
the cost ? 

You whose flying feet crush the life out of so many 



THE NATUEB CURE. — FOE THE BODY, 73 

trooping moments as they come, and whirl yourselves 
dizzily through stifling rooms into the cold air, that cuts 
its way through your heated lungs, to the very seat of 
life — you who have giddily danced the "Dance of Death," 
was your pleasure woith the life ye forfeited for it ? 

And you, dismal Ascetics, who believe that God only 
loves long faces, and who evolve ponderous sermons out 
of your bile and dyspepsia, darkening the beautiful 
sunshine and the joyous smiles of life with your raven 
shadow, and drowning its gushing laughter and song 
with your croaking and groans, — when the acrid acidity 
of your lives corrodes your health away, and brings 
you down to death, — do you think that your gall and 
vinegar temper, which you mistook for piety, was worth 
the life it cost ? 

Servants of Fashion ! Has your capricious mistress 
ever repaid you for the corns she has pinched on your 
toes, the breath she has crushed from your lungs, the 
curves she has given your spines, the perpetual incon- 
venience and expense she has cost you, and above all 
for the wasted hours and shortened life she has caused ? 

Slaves of Luxury and Appetite! Where are the 
rewards of your fearful sacrifices ? The ancients cast 
their infants into the fiery embrace of their brazen 
Moloch as an offering, but you have ^consumed your- 
selves by slow tortures as living, yet dying, sacrifices to 
your terrible Idols! Item by item have your bodies 
been diseased and tortured to pay the penalty of your 
devotion to Appetite. Gout and dyspepsia, tooth-ache 
and liver- complaint, cholera and delirium tremens, apo- 
plexy and heart disease, nervous torment and lunacy, 
are the rewards of your indulgence in the pleasures of 



14: LICHEN TUFTS. 

Appetite, Luxury, and Indolence ; and the loss of life, 
the extreme penalty the body can pay, is the end of it in 
this world. You have eaten and drunken and revelled, 
at the price of your lives. Were your debauches worth 
their cost ? 

Devotees of wealth, what reward have ye? Lives 
of toil and bondage, to gather, what f You have 
denied yourselves the free gifts of air and exercise per- 
haps, or have worked beyond your strength, and have 
accumulated dust for those who outlive you to quarrel 
about ! You have deferred life until rich enous^h to live, 
and now you die. Have you not sold life too cheaply ? 

Ambition's votaries, who have wrought with all your 
force to make a niche in the temple of Fame, where you 
might dwell and be admired of mankind, what reward 
have ye ? Disappointment and envy and death ! Are 
you paid for your lives ? 

Oh! all ye whose lives have been a feverish strife 
after some imaginary good, come and slake your thirst 
and* cool your fever in the clear waters of the many 
springs among the hills. Let nature's breath breathe 
into your failing lungs the healing of her own. Let the 
serenity of Nature steal upon your unrest, and give you 
her tranquillity. Allow the vigor of her unfailing forces 
to renew your lives. Let the great pulses of her ever 
beating heart throb with your own. 

Thus even hereditary taints of disease in the constitu- 
tion may be overcome in a measure, and the burden of 
pain earned by those who come before us, and not by 
ourselves, may be removed. 

I should find it hard to pardon my ancestors for my 
existence in the flesh, if what they had given me were 



THE NATURE CURE. — FOR THE BODY. 15 

leprous, or scrofulous, or consumptive, or predisposed to 
insanity or special vice. Yet I see many of my fellow 
creatures have existence thrust upon them thus bur- 
dened and cursed. We see distorted, deformed, dis- 
eased, and crippled wretches, who are so from no choice 
of their own, but because they were the infant sacrifices 
devoted to the Moloch of their parents' appetites and 
passions, or their cruelties and mistakes. 

These unfortunates seldom have the mental or moral 
vigor sufficient to reverse the process of destruction 
begun by their progenitors, and by living in accordance 
with the natural laws, rescue themselves from a progres- 
sive march from torment to torment in the abused flesh. 
Too commonly they go on as their fathers did, and 
increase instead of arresting the inherited plague. The 
son of the drunkard, who has inherited the hideous dis- 
ease of his father, feeds this morbid appetite with the 
poison which adds to its craving, and he is sooner a 
drunkard, and more incurable, than his parent. The 
child of gross and vicious parents inherits not only the 
physical consequences of their transgression, but a pas- 
sional bias in the same direction with the parents, and 
will be liable to re-enact their deeds, and so suffer an 
aggravated and double penalty. But those whose men- 
tal perceptions and moral force are sufficient to turn 
them to the simple and efficacious regimen prescribed 
by Natural Law, will be likely to find healing and 
health in it. 

For the remaining few invalids, not included in the 
foregoing, who are ill by accident, and not in conse- 
quence of the culpable ignorance or wickedness of any 
body, there is as much hope in the Nature cure as in 



76 LICHEN TUPTS. 

any. Not that Nature will set broken bones or dislo- 
cated joints, but she will have very much to do with 
curing when they are set. 

I wish not to undervalue any profession, but to give 
nature her due, and she is above all physicians. More- 
over, the claims of the suffering are paramount to the 
claims of all the professions under the sun. Doctors, as 
such, have no claims on the public, except as they heal 
the sick better than they would be healed without them. 

The plea that we should patronize the various hotels, 
shops, schools, artizans, members of the professions, etc., 
in order to sustain them^ seems to me to be arrant twad- 
dle. What claim have they to sustenance ? They are 
for certain uses, and in so far as they are of use, use 
them, but no further. If they are not sufficiently useful 
to command support by their benefit^ let them fall. 
Any institution, or in general any individual who cannot 
stand alone, with at most a little propping to begin 
with, might, better fall than pretend to stand. Who 
props up the seedling pine in the forest to make it grow 
straight, and not fall down from weakness? If one cannot 
grow from the centre outward, self-balanced, and fast 
by his own roots, and be helped to grow only for the 
indispensable fruit he bears, he had better relinquish his 
ambition to be a tree, and be only what his own power 
and capacities would make him. Let your supernu- 
merary doctors and lawyers, etc., take to ditching or 
ploughing, or some of the trades that are never full, and 
in which it is hardly possible to have a superfluity. If 
there were no other way to prevent doctors from starv- 
ing, except to use their services when we didn't want 
them, there might be some charity in patrpnizing them, 



THE NATUEB CURE. — ^FOR THE BODY. 11 

especially if that were cheaper than paying a pauper tax 
to support them in another, but analogous way. But as 
circumstances are, where is the need ? Let us appeal to 
the Great Physician out of doors, and let the M.D.'s do 
as they like, if they do not interfere with us. Surely 
they have no right to feel aggrieved if we only let them 
alone. It is often the very best thing we can do by 
anybody, to let them be. We will give them full oppor- 
tunity to mind their own business, by minding ours. If 
we need them we will ask for them, and such patronage 
will not be a charity nor a humiliation to the man who 
feels he does only what is needed, and is paid only for 
what he has done. Good physicians agree that they are 
only nature's aids ; and bad ones, who set up in opposi- 
tion to her, are those we wish to see driven into some 
less destructive employment. 

Come then into the fields and watch the bright-eyed 
toads catch flies, and learn of them how to trill the 
French R ; or go down by the marshes and look for 
"Pete," whom you hear so many little frogs calling for. 
Perhaps he is the very doctor who can cure you. Or go 
into the woods and look for bright spotted lizards under 
the stones and old chunks of rotten wood, or watch the 
woodpecker listening like the veriest eavesdropper, at 
all the cracks of the dead tree, to hear what the grubs 
are saying, ere he opens the door with his bill, and ar- 
rests the incipient beetle at his dinner. Go into the 
beech woods and watch the squirrel stuff his cheeks with 
the triangular nuts, and go frisking off to his hole, 
without seeming in the least encumbered by his loaded 
pouches. See the pigeons scratch up the dead leave^ 
like so many of the most beautiful and graceful of hens, 



78 LICHEN TUFTS. 

laying bare the sprouting beechnuts they wish to carry 
to their young ; or if you are able, follow them to their 
nesting place, and see acres and miles of these beautiful 
creatures at home among their fat squabby babies, and 
try to estimate the amount of life stirring the air there, 
and you will begin to feel as if you were absorbing the 
superabundant and overflowing vitality into your own 
systems. 

" Go to grass." It will do you good ; if it does not, 
it is an error easily repented of, and a course easily 
abandoned, and one that will leave no poison in the sys- 
tem nor sting in the conscience. But try it, and rest 
assured, on the e^erience of those who have tried the 
experiment, that greens will be good for you, if properly 
taken. 

I hope yet to see invalids giving their full faith only 
to that school of medicine whose basis of operations is 
as broad as all-out-of-doors. 



THE NATURE CUEE.— FOR THE MJND. 

People, especially the young, often get a diseased 
appetite for excitement and artificial amusements, and 
what is called society, to the exclusion of far better 
things ; not because the taste was originally depraved, 
but because life has presented to them no real and abid- 
ing interest. 

It is common to hear such persons declare in hours of 
reaction and discontent, that they find nothing worth 
living for ; they find no pursuit worth all the toil and 
trouble it costs, and no aim worthy of life. The plea- 
sures they devour last but a little while, and continual 
change and new excitements are craved with perpetual 
hunger, which no amount of feeding ever satisfies — the 
only satiety being spiritual dyspepsia and disgust. 

Men usually seek refuge in business from the hungry 
needs of their inner selves, and try to quench their soul's 
perennial thirst with eager draughts of gain. Like 
Midas, they seek to turn all that they touch into gold ; 
and when it is done, they find themselves like him, 
starving at their own banquets, because gold is neither 
food nor drink. 

Women commonly seek their refuge in matrimony, 
only to find themselves called upon to feed instead of 
being fed ; and behold their garners are empty and their 
fountains dry — they perish of thirst and starvation of 
mind and heart, and others perish with them ; so we 
see the world peopled with the famished skeletons of 



80 LICHEN TUFTS. 

men and women, who seem, Prometheus-like, to be for 
ever renewed, but to be for ever devoured by the crav- 
ing vultures of immortal want and undying need. 

To convince us that this condition is abnormal and 
unnatural, we need only look at nature's ever fresh tran- 
quillity. 

To cure it in its chronic state, is only possible to Infi- 
nite Grace — a physician not often applied to for that 
purpose. 

Wisdom will avert the disease in the beginning, or 
find it easily cured in its earlier stages, the chief diffi- 
culty being to get other people to allow the patient to 
take the prescription, not because it is difficult or dan- 
gerous, but because the few who admit the existence of 
the disease despise the simplicity of the remedy. If it 
were some great thing, they would believe in it, but 
what is the use of leavmg the big Pharpar and Abana to 
go and wash in that little Jordan ? 

But the mass deny the existence of the disease, and 
the necessity of cure, just as madmen rave that they are 
not mad. 

Others say that this is a want for which there is no 
supply, a disease for which there is no cure. Man was 
born to hunger and thirst unfed — ^to suffer unrelieved. 
This life must be barren and starved, that in the life to 
come we may have more abundance. It is a doom from 
which there is no appeal — a fate from which there is no 
escape. 

They might as well say that children were made on 
purpose to cry, and that their mothers ought to starve 
them in the cradle, to make them " laugh and grow fat " 
when they are men. 



THE NATURE CURE. FOR THE MTND. 81 

It seems to be a sort of general belief that people 
ought to be treated by the rule of contrary, and sup- 
plied with exactly the things they do not want. When a 
hody is naked they give it sermons, and when it is hun- 
gry, spiritual advice; but when the soxil is starving 
scholars feed it with Latin and Metaphysics, common folks 
offer it pork and potatoes, or perhaps a new coat or 
bonnet, and too often religionists only give it creeds and 
formulas and beliefs, instead of the bread and water of 
life ; and when the mind is hungry they give it no meat, 
when athirst they give it no drink, when sick and in 
prison they minister not unto it, because they cannot 
comprehend the perishing need. 

To knoio^ is as positive and keen a want of the mind 
as hunger is of the body, or grace of the guilty soul. 

As everybody recognises the necessity of food for the 
body, and in this country most jDCople believe in the 
need of aliment for the moral part of the human trinity, 
I pass to that part of our hungering which the great 
mass of the people think may go unfed. 

They can see no use in so much learning. What 
will be done with it ? If one can read, and write, and 
cypher, he has enough to do business, and be " respect- 
able," and what more would he have ? There are not 
wanting those in our midst who think it a waste of time 
and money to buy and read books ; and some of our 
next-door neighbors think that knowledge tends to 
knavery and pride, and eschew it accordingly. Said 
one of this class to a poor school-teacher, " Why in the 
world do you keep pinching yourself, and working and 
saving, just to send yourself to school ? You know 
enough to teach school now, you ought to be satisfied 

4 



82 LICHEN TUFTS. 

and he like other folks.'''' , "But what shall I ^o, if I do 
not go to school ?" asked the girl. " Oh ! dress your- 
self up and catch a man^ and get married and settle 
down, and have a home of your own." " And what 
then?" was the query, not asked often enough, by the 
way, but the answer was only that she was to do then 
as others did. A daughter of one of this sort of 
people importimed for the privilege of mental im- 
provement, but was stopped with the information that 
" she knew enough to keep house," and that " the 
hoys looiildnH like her any hetter if she knew ever so 
much.'''' " She could not make hetter johnny-cakes if 
she should go to school or study ever so much" — 
which must have been immensely consoling to a hungry 
mind. 

One of our neighbors, a rich farmer, had a son who 
worked faithfully for his father until he was twenty 
years old, with only a scanty chance of going occasion- 
ally to the district school. At last the youth, with a 
keen sense of his own deficiencies in learning, besought 
his parent to allow him to go 07ie term to a sort of an 
Academy some twenty miles distant. Consent was 
grudgingly wrung by hard teazing, from the father, and 
a very spare wardrobe and a single shilling furnished 
the young man with all the outfit and means his gene- 
rous parent thought worth while to " throw away " on 
"book learning." And this was not in Tartary nor 
"Borio-boola Gha," nor in the dark ages, but in the 
United States, in the middle of the nineteenth century. 
This kind of mental starvation is terribly common too, 
though these people would feel grievously slandered if 
accused of starving their families ; but what better have 



♦ THE NATURE CURE. — FOR THE MIND. 83 

they done ? Unfortunately, too many of these hungry 
minds get used to being starved after a while ; and though 
they do not quite die, they pine and wither away, until 
what might have been vigorous and majestic intellects 
are stunted dwarfs, nourished with meagerest scraps of 
food, and watered with vain regrets. 

Set before the mass of people, any form of knowledge 
not absolutely necessary to use in the getting of food 
and shelter, and they ask, " Of what use is it ?" This 
question must be answered according to their own ideas 
of use, if they are answered at all. It may be as well 
worth while to answer the ignorant according to his 
ignorance, as to " answer a fool according to his folly," 
as scripture recommends. You can put on a wise look, 
and give them what will be an answer to them. Tell 
them that geology will teach men how to find coal and 
lime, and metals ; that botany Avill teach what plants 
are poisonous, and what are eatable, and what are good 
for medicine ; that entomology will teach where to look 
for cutworms, how to get rid of caterpillars, and how' 
to manage bees ; astronomy will tell when the moon 
changes and when the tide will be high, and will help 
men make almanacs. Mathematics teach how to reckon 
interest, and, by the aid of chemistry, gunpowder, and 
shaving soap, and other such things have been invented 
or discovered. 

What if this truth be not the truth to you ? No 
matter ! It is of no use to tell your truth, that know- 
ledge, like virtue, is worth having for its own sake, 
rather than for the sake of its uses. They will not 
understand nor believe you. And yet, hke the man 
bora blind, who will not believe in nor understand Hght, 



84 LICHEN TUFTS. 

they are suffering for want of that in which- they dis- 
believe. 

They believe all these needs of which I have spoken, 
to be only imaginary wants, and as for the imagination 
itself, it is supposed to be too vague and unreal a thing 
to have any real needs of its own. 

Just what Jesus says we are to take no thought 
for — " w^hat we shall eat, and what we shall drink, and 
wherewithal we shall be clothed," are the only things 
we do take thought for and reckon valuable, except 
money, that treasure we are warned not to lay up in 
this rusty, moth-eaten, and thievish world. 

" As a man thinketh, so is he." Our thoughts are 
us. What we thinJc^ we are. What we know., we are. 
What we learn becomes part of our minds. That 
which we remember who shall teach us to forget ? Is 
death the everlasting sleep unbelievers teach ? Do we, 
Christians, really believe ourselves immortal ? And if 
we do., where are the treasures we are accumulating to 
take with us into the safety of an incorruptible world ? 

We can take only ourselves along, without the 
bodies of dust, and all the wealth w^e can take must be 
part of ourselves. 

Where is that wealth ? We can carry the memory 
of houses and lands, and food and raiment, with us, but 
will these remembered riches make us rich in eternity ? 
Are they any element of true happiness here ? 

Answer, O Midas ! starving at thy own golden 
feast ! 

Will the memory of the giddy excitement of mere 
amusements make a part of that wealth ? How shall thy 
dancing skill content thee, where feet dance no more ? 



THE NATURE CURE. — FOR THE MIND. 85 

Or how shall the ribald jest of the drcus-clown, or the 
airy walk of the acrobat, reach, even in this world, to 
thy inner discontent, or appease its cry ? And canst 
thou carry with thee, for a single hour, a serener tran- 
quilhty, for having seen centaurs at the hippodrome, or 
the dizzy gyrations of the puppets at the theatre ? 
When the lights are out — when the dance is done — the 
play played out — what is there left but the dregs of 
petty jealousies, and envyings, and heart-burnings, 
with all the flavor and aroma of pleasure exhaled and 
gone ? 

The most candid of pleasure-seekers only claim for 
such things, the power of diverting for the time the 
painful or wearisome current of every day thoughts 
and feelings ; or the office of filling up with its manu- 
factured mirth and dazzle, the oft-recurring hiatus in 
life, which else would be empty and bare. 

Amusements have no higher office than diversion; 
they never can be a true interest and object in anything 
worthy to be called life. And yet how many intellects 
have asked for bread, and had these stones given them ! 
Whatever of value these things may have in their own 
place, they never can be satisfactorily substituted for 
the substance of worthier things. 

But find a real interest in those strata of truths which 
lie below all the mud and soil of what is temporary and 
artificial, below the crust of conventionalism, or the 
quicksands of the relative and speculative, where men 
get lost as in a quagmire ; ground your interest on 
what is positive and accessible, and life itself becomes a 
pleasure. 

He who sups on sweets will find his mouth bitter in 



86 LICHEN TUFTS. 

the morning, but a simpler food will nourish without 
any after penalty ; so if you gorge the mind, or its ser- 
vant, the memory, with unsuitable diet, they will get a 
distaste for food from indigestion. 

This state is worse than that of famine. It is not the 
stuffing process of the ordinary educational mills, called 
schools, which is to supply the w^ants of the hungry 
minds, supersede the vulgar and paltry amusements of 
the day, or overthrow the dynasty of the Blondins and 
Blitzes. 

The ordinary educational programme is too much like 
a recipe in a cookery book, to be the thing needed. 
"A cup full of butter, a cup full of sugar, a cup full of 
flour, a cup full of cream, four eggs, a teaspoon full of 
soda, with salt and spice to your taste," is not a very 
essentially different prescription from, "A book full of 
geography, a book full of grammar, a book full of 
arithmetic, a book full of w^ords to spell, an empty book 
to be filled with written words, a little composition, a 
little declamation, w^ith singing to your taste." 

To be satisfied with only this, w^ould be as impossible 
as for the four years' old lad to love to go to school 
where his whole experience consisted in " sitting on a 
bench and saying A." 

No traveller, however expeditious, ever expects to 
see all there is to be seen in the w^orld. It is too much 
for him. Life is too short, and the world too long, for 
such an exploit. Neither does any person expect to 
learn all that there is to be learned in the realm of 
knowledge. A man who would try to farm a whole 
continent would have poor crops, but he who ploughs 
only so much as he can attend to, will have abundance. 



THE NATURE CUBE. FOR THE MIND. 87 

One thing thoroughly done is worth more than many 
slighted jobs. One field of inquiry thoroughly explored, 
is better than a smattering knowledge of many. 

There are two Grand Divisions in the world of 
Learning — the Temporary and the Immortal. 

Of the Temporary are all manual Arts, all of the this 
world Literature which contains no essential and undying 
truth, all Languages Avhich will be useless where the 
thoughts will use no syntax nor lexicon in their utter- 
ance. All these have a single attribute of immor- 
tality, for the discipline they give the mind, it re- 
tains, when the learning that made it strong and 
astute, becomes rubbish in that future life we are pre- 
paring for, where there will be no use for such know- 
ledges. 

The Immortal Learning islhat which we can not only, 
carry with us, but use in eternity. These are Positive 
or Absolute knowledges, those truths eternally true, 
demonstrable by plain proof, or immediately perceivable, 
things which can be reached without theory or guess 
work — the very bones and sinews of learning, the kernel 
of knowledge — the for ever satisfactory. In this realm, 
too, lies the border land between this world's knowings 
and the next, where the Philosophies dwell, like the 
angel of the Apocalypse, with one foot on the earth, 
and the other on the unseen sea. 

Learning is not wisdom, nor is it always knowledge. 
It is not Avhat is put into the mind, but what the mind 
is made capable of doing and producing, which is the 
desideratum. 

Knowledge is mental food. The mind gets hungry 
for the aliment it digests and appropriates to grow 



88 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Strong upon, just as the body feels the want of physical 
nutriment. 

Undigested food, either physical or mental, is useless 
and often detrimental. 

Yet knowledge is worth having for its own sake — is 
worthy of love and effort for the sake of its own value. 
The pursuit of it is a keen pleasure, and its attainment 
a solid satisfaction. 

Nothing is ever earnestly pursued for any sake but 
its own. If we, for a time, seek one thing for the sake 
of another, the pursuit is dropped when the object is 
gained, or when a shorter method of reaching it offers 
itself. A student may study for a diploma, and when 
he gets it, he forgets his wearisome learning, and takes 
to something he likes better. The man who stops his 
drams to win a Avife, will take to his cups again when 
the foolish woman is caught ; he did not love virtue for 
its own sake, but adopted it temporarily for another 
sake. The student who studies for the sake of the uses 
of knowledge may make a good scholar, but never a 
great one. All greatness must grow from an all-absorb- 
ing love for the object. The pursuit of the object 
becomes a passion, and the passion becomes exalted into 
devotion. Other considerations may be of im2:)ortance, 
may be respected — attended to in a measure — loved 
second best — but the profoundest love is never forgotten, 
never neglected, never put off for minor things — and all 
other earthly things are minor in comparison with this. 

Such devotion makes the great painter, the great 
musician, architect, or naturalist. The mere ordinary 
aimless aims of life are poor grovelling to them. The 
majority of people live because they were born, and 



THE NATURE CURE. — FOR THE MIND. 89 

have not died yet. They only live because they are 
alive, and do not know what else to do. Any vegetable 
does as much. But these others have ennobled life by 
their brave living. Most of us leave it ignoble enough, 
in our aimless twaddling which we accept as life. But 
try to bribe or threaten men or women who have some 
such object in existence — who live on purpose, and are 
glad they are alive — who would have chosen to be born 
if they had been consulted, and who live, even here, 
after they die. See what answer you will get of such I 

The musician Haydn (I think it was) when threat- 
ened with what would be a terrible punishment to an 
ordinary artist — the condemnation of the popular school 
of music, which, they told him, forbade certain liberties 
which he had taken with the established rules. " But 
they are agreeable to the ear, and I alloio them t " was 
the reply of this man, who loved his art better than he 
loved success. His great love conquered the arbitrary 
rule, and achieved success in the teeth of criticism. 

" Do not paint, or you will starve !" said her friends to 
young Rosa Bonheur, " you shall be a milliner and get 
rich !" But the enthusiast loved art better than money 
or bread, and studied beasts in the dirty shambles, 
rather than laces and flowers in the shop, and through 
her severe and toilsome obedience to the one absorbing 
passion of her life, she conquered obstacles, and poverty, 
and prejudice, and stands crowned with wealth and 
honors among those who would have made her a milli- 
ner. 

The Emperor of France offered the most honorable 
place and the highest salary offered to any Professor in 
his empire, to the Swiss naturalist, who replied that he 

4* 



90 LICHEN TUFTS. 

had not time to attend to it. A little man would have 
had no time for anything else ! *' You shall have any 
price you ask, if you will but give us a lecture !" said a 
lyceum committee to the same great naturalist, but, " I 
have no time to waste i?i making money ! " was the sim- 
ply sublime reply of Agassiz. 

Ah ! such souls live in a clearer atmosphere than the 
dull fogs most of us inhabit. They reckon profit and 
loss by a different currency, and their riches cannot be 
computed in gold and silver. 

They have loved their love /or its own sake. 

An ordinary conventional life is so hollow, that it will 
sound like an empty cask, when it comes in contact with 
what is substantial ; but let this life grow as if it were 
alive, and be filled with substancie, and it will no longer 
ring with its own emptiness. 

There is no languor nor ennui to enervate the mind 
which has taken an earnest hold of the teachings of 
nature. 

He who is intimate with nature at home can- 
not be ignorant, though he may never have learned 
the alphabet. He has the key to a realm of 
treasures of which nobody will dispute the possession, 
for, like language, it belongs to everybody who has a 
mind to use it. 

It is a partly explored region, with new wonders wait- 
ing to be discovered by new adventurers, and exhaust- 
less marvels for every explorer. 

Happiness, with a vital zest and interest in it, abides 
out of doors with nature. You can find it there plenty 
and cheap. The birds and waters ask no admission 
tickets to their free concerts, and the miracles of growth 



THE NATURE CURE. — FOR THE MIND. 91 

and being, surpassing all the feats of all the magicians 
that ever lived, are there enacted every day. 

Meet a man grievously vexed with the blue devils, and 
tell him there is an hour's serene happiness to be got out 
of a certain old crumbling mossy stump, surrounded by 
a sorrel sod and two dead mullein stalks, and he will 
think you are a fool, perhaps, and go on despising your 
childishness, and magnifying his own despair, because 
John Smith's note is worth only fifty cents on a dollar. 

Never mind — you are a philosopher, and can afford to 
be thought a fool. Why not ? If it is any comfort to 
any care-harassed mortal to set you down among the 
dunces, because you are not also tormented, let him have 
all the poor mite of satisfaction he can get out of a con- 
viction of your stupidity. You live at headquarters, 
where happiness grows spontaneously with the weeds, 
and you can spare such bits of pleasure to anybody. 

These poor mammon-ridden wretches would, perhaps, 
none of them be wilUng to have this persecuting Old 
Man of the Sea, of their cares, taken off their galled 
shoulders, to be exchanged for the thriftless joys of the 
naturalist. 

As soon as you begin to enter into the arcana of nature, 
you feel the shackles of outward customs grow loose, 
and the liveries of many ser\TLtudes drop off, as a bird 
moults its feathers. Nothing is done suddenly, for 
Nature has i)lenty of time — all the time there is — and is 
never in a hurry. So these relics of old bondages wear 
out, and fall away piecemeal, and you hardly know when 
you lose them, but some day perhaps others tell you 
they are gone, They are finding fault as they tell you, 
and youkjiow they tell the truth, because the comj)laint 



92 LICHEN TUFTS. 

does not annoy you as it would have done once. Other 
men's opinions of you are noAV of less import to you 
than your own. You respect yourself — you approve 
yourself, therefore you can afford to be censured for 
what is best and bravest in you — you can afford to be 
misunderstood. What matter if even, your friends 
accuse you of growing " eccentric" on purpose to gain 
the notice of other people's eyes ! You can afford even 
that, for you know that very unlike causes produce like 
results, and forgetting that other people have eyes or 
tongues, sometimes produces similar effects to remem- 
bering those same eyes all the time. Human vanity 
will permit but few persons to believe that their opinions 
are matters of absolute indifference to one of their fel- 
low mortals. They can understand how a person might 
make himself ridiculous for the sake of being noticed, 
but that that notice should be entirely forgotten and 
un thought of is inconceivable ! 

Let them flatter themselves that they have demo- 
lished you by their ridicule. If it pleases them there 
is that much pleasure gained to the world, and as you 
have not felt it, you have lost nothing. 

You have changed your standard of measurement. 
You no longer ask ; " Do they believe it ? " but, " Is it 
right in itself? " This return to the normal standard — 
to the absolute truth instead of the accepted version of 
things, will work great transformations in any cha- 
racter, definite enough to deserve the name of charac- 
ter. 

Unnoticed as the process of liberation may be, the 
effect of the liberty is noticeable enough. A prisoner, 
long in shackles, when first released, still walks as if 



THE NATURE CUKE. — FOE THE MIND. 93 

restrained ; but the artificial gait soon wears out, and 
liberty restores the grace of unfettered motion. 

In the woods and fields, people's eyes are ofi", and 
you who had been a prisoner to their criticisms, find 
your limbs loose and you walk freely. By and by you 
get the habit of being free, even among your fellows. 
They were your jailors once, but their term of ofiice has 
expired for ever. 

Of course those people to whom liberty is offensive, 
will find fault. They will sneer at, and perhaps slander 
you. What if they do ? It is their bent — let them 
have it ! (Especially as you cannot hinder them.) 

If they were in China they would be shocked at a 
woman's foot if it took the liberty of growing as God 
intended. If they lived in Malacca they would be dis- 
gusted with any man who would dare to let his teeth 
remain " white like a dog's." If they were among our 
aborigines they would be scandalized at the bad taste 
of any military gentleman who would prefer his OAvn 
unstained complexion to the fashionable bars of red and 
black paint, with which their code of decorum insists 
they should beautify their countenances. 

Of course Fashion will be against you, but what of 
it? Counting numbers, you will be in a very small 
minority ; but in very truth, where is the majority 
greater than your Liberty, Nature, and Nature's God ? 

Mental liberty is a prerequisite to all deep and abiding 
happiness, and Nature sets you free, if you are willing 
to be emancipated. 

When you have achieved sufficient independence to 
be able to make your own observations, from thence do 
your own reasoning, and deduce your own conclusions 



94 LICHEN TUFTS. 

with tolerable accuracy, you are just prepared to com- 
mence those explorations that none have achieved before 
you, and that the scientific world is waiting for. Why 
should not you, as well as another, unlock those myste- 
ries, and enrich mankind with new revelations of 
science ? 

There are momentous problems, as well as less signifi- 
cant ones, waiting for solution. A few examples of 
these unsolved problems will convince the dullest 
believer in plodding stupidity, that there are at least a 
few scientific facts worth discovering. 

Over a large tract of our Western country, there 
prevails at a certain season of the year, a strange and 
often fatal disease among cattle, known as the milk sick- 
ness. It is evidently produced by poison, and the 
poison-producing tracts are so definitely marked that 
they can be fenced in, and the cattle kept out, and the 
disease ceases. But though this disease is so wide 
spread and so well known when it appears, and its 
locality so plainly discoverable, no one has yet been able, 
with any reasonable show of demonstration, to tell the 
cause of this remarkable fatality. The inclosed noxious 
localities have been examined, inch by inch, for they 
are generally quite limited in extent, and yet nothing 
has been discovered there, not common to all the rest 
of the region round about. 

Now the stupidest Hoosier that ever thought "larnin'" 
a humbug, would be glad to know the cause of this 
plague, especially if, as is often the case, the knowledge 
of the cause would indicate the kind of remedy needed. 

In this case superficial and unphilosophical investiga- 
tions have proved to be worthless, The only index to 



THE NATURE CURE. FOR THE MIND. 95 

the probable cause, yet found, is the declarations of the 
only men of science who have looked into it. These are 
physicians, who declare the disease to have every 
appearance of being produced by a mineral poison. 
The farmers, who had before convinced themselves that 
if it was produced by any vegetable agent, it was an 
invisible one, ploughed up and examined the plague spots, 
without result. There were no chemists among them 
to test the soil, nor explorers to investigate the where- 
fore of those mineral exhalations, if such they were, 
making their appearance at one season more than 
another. 

This problem, of pecuniary and sanitary as well as 
scientific interest, remains to be solved. 

When will some naturalist give us the modus operandi 
of the fungus called smut, in grain, and discover its 
remedy ? 

Who will demonstrate the cause of the potato disease, 
and devise a preventive ? 

A reasonable acquaintance Avith natural science would 
prevent some disastrous mistakes. Men have beggared 
themselves in search of coal and other minerals, in places 
where any tolerable geologist could have foretold cer- 
tain failure, since he would know that such minerals are 
never found in such places. 

I cite these few examples from multitudes I might 
mention, to show that mere utilitarians, of the coarsest 
type, have a bread and butter interest in the growth of 
scientific knowledge, and that the ploddingest plodders 
will gain a dollar and cent advantage from the researches 
of those w^hose thriftless studies they could see no 
use in. 



96 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Thinkers will see that the far better and truer reasons 
for the study of Nature, I have given first. 

" This is all very well," says one, " for those who 
have time to attend to it, but working people have no 
time for such studies." 

Let us look at this excuse for a moment. 

We do not expect a woman who does her own house- 
work, and sewing for a husband and seven children, 
beside workmen and boarders, to be very much at leisure 
for intellectual pursuits, nor would we expect to find a 
devotee of science in a man with a sick wife and in- 
numerable responsibilities, little and great, to provide 
for. The mere fact that such people contrive to live at 
all^ proves how much can be got out of twenty-four 
hours per day. 

See how many useless and foolish things get done, 
and reckon if the useful and healthful pursuit of know- 
ledge would not occupy the same time far more plea- 
santly and profitably. 

When we, the working people, make such excuses for 
ourselves, we justify the insolent effi'ontery of those 
aristocrats who claim that it is necessary to have a privi- 
leged class to do the learning and thinking, leaving 
another class to perform all labor ; for labor, they say, is 
incompatible with study and tho'ught. Indignant denials 
of our inferiority are only ridiculous, when we declare 
ourselves to be unable to make ourselves the peers of 
any class we please. 

Have you forgotten Hugh Miller, the Scotch quarry- 
man's apprentice, who studied the revelations Nature 
made to him in his vocation, and thus became the 
world-renowned geologist ? He tells not only the result, 



THE NATURE CUKE. FOR THE MIND. 9*7 

but the process of his learning, and shows how his love 
of knowledge was a perennial enjoyment and blessing 
to him — a safeguard against the seductions of vice and 
extravagance — an incentive to industry and virtue — and, 
though he does not say it, we know it was a rich gift to 
the world. 

Indeed his whole career goes to show that physical 
labor is a help to mental growth and health, for when 
the growing importance of his intellectual labors and 
discoveries caused him to devote himself exclusively to 
study, abandoning the manual labor of his earher years, 
the overtaxed mind gave way, and the man went mad 
and died. 

The nice balance of the physical and mental forces 
was lost, and all was lost. His greatness grew out of 
his using his mind and his hands in connexion. 

Any farmer's boy or girl has as much opportunity as he, 
and as much time. He observed as he worked. So can 
any of us who live in the country. We can study 
Nature as we work in the garden and the field. What 
few books we need, cost less than we expend for the so- 
called pleasures of which I have spoken. 

We afford those things we care most for. If we care 
most for dress and show, we will find ways to afford 
aliment for our vanity. If we care most for money we 
will contrive to accumulate it. If we care most for the 
opinions of others, we will devote time and energy to 
winning their favor. If we love moral and spiritual 
things best, we will not stint our devotions and our 
souls' culture to a few hours on Sunday. If we care more 
for our minds than our bodies, our minds will be minis- 
tered to. If we choose, we may be learned and even wise. 



98 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Nature is not an exacting mistress. She will yield her 
treasures to one who gives her only the odd scraps of 
half worn hours, and the fag end of holidays. She is 
patient, and for ever new. To the weary and heart-worn, 
or to the empty soul, she is an untiring solace — a faith- 
ful friend. Her lessons are food and rest, and like a 
fountain in a desert place, or " the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land." 



THE PERFECTION OF THE NATURAL. 

In our often arbitrary use of the terms " good " and 
" bad," " perfect " and " imperfect," we betray a faith, 
instinctive and unconquerable, in the existence of a 
positive standard of perfection, to or from which all our 
comparisons are made. 

If beauty or goodness Avere but comparative qualities, 
our language would not need, and never would have 
had a superlative form of expression. But the simple 
fact that mankind, even in the earlier ages, felt the ne- 
cessity of some mode of expressing the different degrees 
of excellence, from a lower up to a higher, and the 
highest^ shows the existence of a common instinct of the 
race recognising the ideal of the perfect, and the aspira- 
tions of mankind have ever been directed towards this 
ideal. 

Slowly, as through the lapse of ages Truth fed the 
hungry multitude by the hands of her chosen philoso- 
phers and prophets, has the world recognised a nearer 
approach to the absolute standard. 

The soul of Nature stretches out her hands in her 
great yearning towards the better and the higher, and 
though in her eagerness she grasps too often a spurious 
good — a delusive shadow of better things — still, though 
cheated and mistaken, and croAvned with a thorny and 
stinging experience, her hunger and thirst after perfec- 
tion proves the existence of a supply suited to her 
wants. 



100 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Nowhere in God's universe is there any natural want 
given, jvithout a suitable supply, prepared somewhere 
in nature, to meet it. The lips and speech — the ear and 
sound — the eye and light — the heaving lungs and the 
inbreathed air, in their adaptation to each other are 
but a few from myriads of examples and proofs of this 
truth. 

Nature is young yet, with childhood's instinctive un- 
rest and foreknowledge of its own predestined growth 
and maturity, and though her hopes are sometimes wild 
and extravagant, the slow coming perfection of her life 
shall as far exceed her present ideal, as the realities of life 
transcend the visionary castles in the air built for its 
future by the child. 

Begin where we will, in the lower, material world, 
we find this same tendency from a lower towards a 
higher ; we find that there exists an ideal type of per- 
fection for every grade of being. 

From the slippery mud that clogs our wagon wheels, 
and scarce serves to make the commonest brick, through 
the finer material of which the chemist forms his cruci- 
ble, and that which the potter moulds into shapes to suit 
his will, to that highest type of argillaceous existence — 
the porcelain clay, which labor and fire transform into 
creations of such beauty, that human pride loves to add 
them to its stores of brittle magnificence. 

From the yellow-grey desert sand, to the crystal and 
stores of gems, — from dingy charcoal dust, to diamond 
sparks and the " mountain of light " to which Brahmins 
paid divine honors. 

From the lime we plaster on our walls, up through 
the rich marbles and alabaster — that build fountains and 



THE PERFECTION OF THE NATURAL. 101 

tombs — palaces and monuments, and growing life-like 
under the sculptor's hands, give down from age to age 
the artist's ideas of physical perfection. Through the 
strange machinery of animal skeletons, and the varying 
beauty of many-tinted shells to the coral trees growmg 
with the instinct of animal life, working and breathing, 
as it builds island w^alls from old ocean's floor up to the 
sunlight. 

From all of these advances towards perfection among 
existences below consciousness or volition, we infer ine- 
vitably the progress of the very elements themselves, 
towards the most perfect development possible to their 
natures ; and the continued transition from the mineral 
to the vegetable and animal kingdoms, by becoming 
aliment to supply some of their needs in the mysterious 
j)rocess of nutrition and growth, evinces a tendency in 
lower to grow up and pass into higher states of exist- 
ence. 

The miracle of Adam's creation from the dust of the 
earth is renewed in the growth of every living creature, 
since the earth and the elements are converted in the 
laboratory of vegetable existences, into the food which 
is again transformed, in the alembic of the body, into 
materials for forming the body itself. Like Adam, every 
man is made of dust. 

This great sermon on the transfiguration of matter, 
preached by the stones during all the six thousand years 
of man's existence, has been heard in different ages, by 
different disciples of nature, who, while accepting the 
outward truth so far as they understood it, gave always 
some mythical and hidden significance to the plain 
speech of their teacher, evolving by the magic of poetry. 



102 LICHEN TUFTS. 

from stubborn facts, beautiful fictitious theories by 
which to solve eternity's problem of the origin, the 
existence and the desiiny of spirit. 

Mrs. Child brings up the old idea of the growth of 
spirit out of matter, or rather its growth through matter, 
in her *' Poet's dream of the soul," in which she repre- 
sents an agate lying in the earth, gaining the sole idea 
of its existence from the roots of a violet which embraced 
it. The knowledge that there was such a thing as life 
filled the stone with so intense a desire for an existence 
having an element of vitality — life — that it wished itself 
away into a lichen that grew up in the sunshine and 
felt the inspiration of the winds of heaven. But that 
aspiration which belongs to spirit, and seems even to 
impel upwards insensate matter, stirred in the new exist- 
ence of that spark of spiritual life, and as it learned of 
higher forms of being — higher grades and developments 
in life, again it passed upwards into a higher sphere, and 
again, and yet again, until through varied shapes it 
passed through a nightingale into the musician Men- 
delssohn. 

This poetical fiction was once accej^ted by a school of 
philosophers, who certainly had more foundation for 
their theory than many another school and sect, which 
have obtained more widely in the world than this, for 
though these men took the shadow for the substance, 
still there loas a substance to cast 4he shadow, while 
many a school of sectaries have built their faith on the 
" shadow of a shade." 

But to return from this speculative soul-making to the 
passing of the mineral up into the vegetable kingdom, 
and there trace the footprints of nature's upward pil- 



THE PERFECTION OF THE NATURAL. 103 

grimage, from the first initial Algae of Geologic reve- 
lation, to the elaborately perfected PhaBnogamia of 
the historic period. We find in those vast fossil forests 
revealed to us in coal beds, mostly gigantic Cryptogamia, 
luxuriant and wonderful, yet lacking many of the organs 
common to all the more perfectly organized plants, of 
our present more diminutive, but more numerous, and 
more highly finished genera of plants. 

But beyond this passing from one species of an earlier 
period to a more perfect one of a later, there is this per- 
fecting process going on in the different varieties of the 
same species, under favorable circumstances many varie- 
ties being coined at will by the ingenuity and skill of 
the human race. Thus a single variety of wild rose, 
perfect in itself, m one sense of the word perfect, can be 
varied by climate, and soil, and cultivation, into innume- 
rable phases of beauty, " differing one from the other as 
the stars differ in glory," yet all developments of the 
ideal perfection, which, though absolute and infinite, ad- 
mits of more variation than imperfection, which is com- 
parative and limited. 

Naturalists tell us that double flowers are monsters ; 
but the universal consent of all tastes, civifized and 
savage, has pronounced this development of educated 
nature to be beautiful, and thus contradicts the idea of 
deformity which is alw^ays hideous. 

The wild crab tree was perfect as a crab, but not as 
an apple, until its wild bitterness was w^on away by the 
faithful and kind education given it by those it so plente- 
ously rewarded with the luscious richness of its har- 
vest gifts. 

Some of the higher orders of plants seem to be 



104 LICHEN TUFTS. 

endowed, not only with sensation, but with instinct, dis- 
covering by some unknown power, the presence of vari- 
ous substances not in actual contact with them. Thus 
several species of vines, such as pumpkins and melons, 
will in one night turn the straightforward direction of 
their growth to reach a vessel of water placed a few inches 
to one side of their path. Twining plants will reach 
a support placed near them, and tendrils remain uncurled, 
stretching out their long fingers to find something they 
can cling to, which, when found, they lose no time in 
grasping. 

The Dionea sets snares for the luckless flies it lures 
with its sweetness, and then, like a spider or a coquette, 
imprisons and pierces its victims with its thorns ; and 
these insects are said to supply an important item of 
food to this carnivorous vegetable. The pitcher plant 
in the desert, opens and holds up its cruse to catch the 
rain and dew, and then shuts down its lid to Jieep the 
sun from stealing away the treasure. The mimosa, most 
like an animal of all, shrinks from a touch, and even 
dies to escape the cruel handling of those who wish to 
gratify their curiosity at the expense of its sensitive 
organism. 

All these approaches towards sensation and volition, 
betoken advancement towards the object of nature's 
involuntary yet incessant search — a something higher. 
But as we seldom find the realization of our expec- 
tations in the place or manner we had calculated on, so 
if we look among these higher developments of plant 
life for the place where the vegetable kingdom is to be 
found in nearest approximation towards the animal, we 
shall not find it. The bottom of the valley of humilia- 



THE PERFECTION OF THE NATURAL. 105 

tion is the nearest place to Heaven, so among the lower 
Algae, the very alpha of vegetation, we are to look for 
those strange animal plants, or vegetable animals, which 
link the two kingdoms together and make their boundary- 
lines indefinite. From these the transition is rapid to 
the zoophytes, and up, through an almost endless chain 
of marine and terrestrial animals, whose cold, and often 
colorless, blood seems as lifeless as the sap of trees, or 
the crimson juice of the bleeding sanguinaria. 

But the organism that approaches nearer and nearer 
the perfect, not only through all the successive Geologic 
periods, but up from one race to another of existing 
animals, develops more and more of that species of 
intelligence called instinct, until the more fervent action 
of the vital forces brings warmth, and dawning glimpses 
of intellect, which, growing finer and purer, less gross 
and more flexible, becomes complicated — active with the 
impulses of will, and the teachings of something very 
like reason, if not its very self, until it emerges from 
this long, long Hne of successive, ever-advancing exist- 
ences, into the highest type of animal existences yet 
known — the Human. 

When we come to the more perfectly organized plants 
and animals we find a new and important feature 
developing itself, and this is the more distmct individu- 
ality of the single members of any species. Hitherto 
we have been considering differences shaded off" into 
almost indistinguishable likenesses, and diversities 
becoming apparently identical. From considermg these 
seeming transitions, and likenesses between differences, 
we turn to scanning those ^ct stranger individual 
distinctions which separate the universe into items 

5 



106 LICHEN TUFTS. 

which must for eyer remain distinct. Among many 
plants, copies of original varieties can only be obtained 
by grafting, budding, cuttings, &c., the seed producing 
new individual varieties endlessly ; but when we come 
to animals, this exceptional mode of producing synonyms 
no longer exists, and we can find only individuals, in a 
great measure resembling each other, it is true, but in 
the superior races, so essentially difiering in character, 
as to require separate study to understand the treatment 
of each individual, in place of the generalizing process 
which sufficed with plants and the lower animals. 

This individuahty, in some degree, exists among all 
organized beings, and in each individual can be clearly, 
definitely, and easily traced, the advancing steps of 
nature towards perfection. In plants — even in the sim- 
plest and lowest, the individual can be traced from the 
minute s23ore or seed, through the various stages of ger- 
mination and growth — its first singular leaves, and after 
growth of foliage, its blossoming and fruitage, and until 
the ascending circle is completed in the seed containing 
the life of another generation. 

The lower animals, like plants, change more exter- 
nally than those of a higher order. 

Thus the mosquito passes from its egg-built life-boat 
into a water monster of minute dimensions, and after- 
wards leaving the skin which protected its aquatic exist- 
ence as a legacy to its native puddle, it creeps into upper 
air, furnished with wings and a song. Numerous reptiles 
perform this pilgrimage through two elements in order to 
perfect their natural developments, and the whole or 
nearly the whole tribe *bf winged insects undergo the 
change from creeping to flying things. Some of these 



THE PERFECTION OF THE NATUKAL. 107 

transformations are so beautiful as to be assumed as 
types of mankind's angel life, following the human one. 

The Greeks carved butterflies on their tombstones as 
emblems of the changed condition of the individual 
whose forsaken shell lay under the monument. 

The larvae, emerging froifi the egg's prison shell, 
and crawlmg, dim-sighted and slow, as it grew to the 
fuU size and perfection of its worm-life, feels the hour 
approaching when the caterpillar must die and the but- 
terfly be born ; so, sometimes winding itself in a silken 
shroud, and sometimes casing itself in a hard horny 
shell, it falls into a sleep from which it awakes not a 
blind, traiUng worm, but a new creature, many-eyed 
and rainbow-winged, no longer doomed to gnaw its 
daily food from bitter leaves, but to float ever among 
flowers, and drink their full cups of sweetness. 

Of all the emblems of the myth-loving Greeks,! know 
of none so beautiful as this type of growth from the low 
and loathsome to the perfected and beautiful individual 
creature. 

From the bare nestling, with its great head, and sealed 
eyes, and its wide gaping mouth, through the chirping 
fledgling, to the full plumed singing bird, as from the 
babe through childhood and youth to the full grown 
adult, we see always before us the operation of the same 
universal law of progress, the same tendency in the 
natural to perfect itself. 

Thus far have we traced the material, visible, tangible 
revelations of Nature, and their unvarying teachings 
point us forward and upward. She has qualities which 
we are too little and too ignorant to weigh or measure, 
properties as undeniable as they are incomprehensible 



108 LICHEN TUFTS. 

and inscrutable. But no one of them contradicts this 
one great lesson ; though we do not know positively 
that they have been subject to this progressive law, 
neither do we know the contrary. 

Light may be precisely as it has always been since its 
creation, but not where it lias always been, for it is ever 
moving, ever fleeing through space, like a thought, to 
reach some more distant sj^ot in the universe. 

Heat, too, may be an eternal element, changeless and 
perfect from the beginning ; but if electricity has, we 
have no evidence of the fact, for its phenomena have 
progressed essentially since the scientific observations 
of men were first recorded. It is not yet three hundred 
years, I believe, since the Aurora Borealis, generally 
believed to be an electric phenomenon, was first observed. 
If it had existed prior to that time, as it now exists, 
people could not fail to observe it, and a people super- 
stitious enough to be frightened out of their wits by a 
comet, would surely have as well recorded their terror 
at a sky all ablaze with strange cold flames, such as 
light some of our winter nights, as to have written 
down their exorcisms of Satan in order to light the 
darkness of an eclipse. 

History and analogy, then, go to teach us that uni- 
versal nature is, and ever has been, climbing upwards 
towards perfection. True, all organized being is redu- 
cible to a few simple elements, in which there is no such 
law apparent ; yet these elements seem restlessly seeking 
to enter new combinations, and in these combinations to 
become part of new organizations, and there obey this 
organic law of the universe. 

In following the material creation up from its inau- 



THE PERFECTION OP THE NATURAL. 109 

guration, we come to places where were successively 
developed animation, volition, will, intelligence, and 
reason, all of which, except the first, find their highest 
development in the Human race. All the passions, 
feelings, and most of the instincts of the lower animals, 
are heightened, spiritualized, and intensified, and form 
an essential part of the in\dsible man ; and these facul- 
ties, or rather feelings, seem, when we find them in their 
less perverted and more natural state, like all lesser 
things, to recognise the existence of a higher life, and 
by their endeavor to slough off their unnatural corrup- 
tion and depravity, seek to assimilate themselves to their 
ideal type of natural perfection. 

All the inteUigence and reason of the lower animals 
find a deeper, stronger, more elevated, and very much 
more extensive and perfect development in the intellect 
of man, and this superiority of a force, stronger than 
the physical, is acknowledged by the lower races. The 
hyena and tiger quail before the steady gaze of a soul- 
lighted eye, and the hungriest bear will not devour the 
child who fixes its eye-balls on his own. 

But it is not the supremacy of the intellect alone 
which gives the human will its power over the brute. 
In him there is made manifest a new faculty or force, 
not demonstrated to exist in any other animal— the 
beginning, the initial, the alpha, the algoB and zoophyte 
of a new ascending series of being— winding its spiral 
circles above him, through angel and archangel, seraph 
and cherub, up to the All-Beautiful, All-Wise, All-Good, 
All-Powerful, Essential and Eternal Spirit of the uni- 
verse. 

The existence of this ascending series of being, beyond 



110 LICHEN TUFTS. 

the point where it sojourns in the flesh, because inau- 
dible, invisible, and intangible to the senses, has been 
doubted by some who believed that nature was per- 
fected in man — that he was the ultimate, the highest — 
and that the perfection of the natural was limited to 
man's capacity for improvement and perfection. But 
this class of persons has always been, and probably 
always will be, few in number and limited in influence, 
for in man, as in all the rest of nature, only more self- 
conscious and positive, heave and throb those irresistible 
" propulsions from the night," which never move idly 
towards nothing, but always directly in obedience to the 
strong upward attraction of higher forces. 

Does the restless tide disturb the great deep in idle 
wantonness, or because the resistless attraction of an 
upper world woos it to follow its aspirations'? Why 
then, think ye, should the great tide-wave of human 
aspirations after the higher and holier existences, be 
called the aimless heaving of native unrest ? 

This restless, far-reaching instinct of the soul aspiring 
towards its ideal, is our best and highest proof of the 
existence, and the best demonstration of the nature of 
the unknown world to which we are hastening, and 
of the beings inhabiting it, as well as of our own immor- 
tality. 

That God made man in His own image, we all prove by 
constantly inverting the process, and making Him in the 
image of our inner selves. Every sort of man makes his 
ideal deity something like himself— fashions him accord- 
ing to his own ideas of perfection ; so we find the general 
ideas of God exceedingly diversified and contradictory, as 
well as indefinite and confused. The man only a little 



THE PERFECTION OP THE NATURAL. Ill 

abovG the beasts has a strong, passionate, wilful Deity as 
his mind's ideal — the cruel man has his Vengeance and 
Terror God, and the beast man worships his crocodiles. 
Adam, in his ignorance, imagined the Creator to be as 
gullible as himself, and sought to hide from his presence. 
Some philosophers and many poets, supposmg their 
faculties to have each their prototype in a separate divine 
existence, based on man's multifold nature strange sys- 
tems of polytheism. Others supposed all the sinless uni- 
verse to be pervaded by an essence they called God. 
But the sensual represented their god as a devil ; and the 
philosophers described a " keen, cold " matchless intel- 
lect as their deity ; a set of weaker heads and warmer 
hearts learned God's diviner attributes of justice, mercy, 
and love. Afterwards — ascending ever — prophets with 
both heads and hearts, learned and taught how the 
manifold manifestations of God were only parts of a 
whole — how the all-pervading Life Essence, and the 
guiding Intelligence, and the Spirit of love and compas- 
sion, were all but parts of the Great First Cause. 

Slowly and vaguely, dimly and indistinctly dawned 
these successive ideas on the world, and came at last to 
assume a character for Deity which was the immutable 
and absolute right — the abstract Spirit and concrete 
Essence of perfection — the ultimatum of the universe. 
But men differ so widely in their notions of right that 
their ideas of God are as diversified as ever, for there 
are those of every grade of worshippers known in any 
age, still living and worshipping their highest idea of the 
good and true, from the votaries of serpent gods to the 
disciples of the Universal Heart. 

But God, not being limited by man's base ideas of 



112 LICHEN TUFTS. 

him, has so ordained His laws, or they so exist in Him 
as a part of himself, that they can nowhere be trans- 
gressed with imj^unity, thus fixing limits and boundaries 
to right and wrong, making truth an absolute and posi- 
tive thing — a real, demonstrable fact in existence — -so 
that man has but to read nature's open scroll, to learn 
the truths it behoves him to know. 

But nature's scroll is a sealed book to most eyes — a 
chart of life's voyage made out in unintelligible hiero- 
glyphics, which men are too lazy or too stupid to learn, 
hence the blind groping of the race for ages to find the 
way of truth, to which every tree pointed with innume- 
rable fingers, of which every brook babbled, and every 
breeze whispered — the thunder pealed out the lesson, 
and the birds Avarbled it everyAvhere — the mute flowers 
breathed it out in odorous sighs, and the heart of man 
echoed the voices, yet lost the meaning of his teachers. 

Other revelations were given, but the burning 
truths that came from the inspired lips of God's chosen, 
fell on the same dull ears and clouded understandings, 
till their divine harmonies were tortured into discord, 
and men learned but disjointed scrajDs of the great 
truth. 

But as " Chaos and old nighfr " faded and dissolved 
before the light and life of creation, so pass away these 
dark and cloudy troubles from the human soul. Slowly 
do the dull ears and duller understandings of men come 
to hear and understand the demonstration of truth's 
absolute law, and more slowly still do they come to 
yield it obedience, — hut they are moving ! 

But heavily and slowly, like blind Orion climbing up 
the mountain, bearing his guide up the steep to the 



THE PERFECTION OF THE NATURAL. 113 

summit, where he might meet the first rays of the 
morning's sunlight, which were to unseal his closed lids, 
BO climbs the great world, burdened and blind, towards 
the all-revealing future. The past clings like tendrilled 
vines, or thorny and hooked-fingered brambles, to her 
wet trailing garments, and hoids and hinders her from 
moving on, since she knows not the pathway, and her 
guides are almost, or quite, as blind as she. 

In the many-voiced chorus of the by-gone, she seldom 
heeds or hears the tones of prophecy and " lofty cheer," 
but listens, with flagging steps and weary heart, to the 
oft-recurring refrain, "Tempt not the untried ill in 
search of the unknown good — keep what thou hast — it 
is thine " — and were it not for the restless life-growth 
in all things, the world, obedient to its conservative 
teachers, would stagnate and die. 

This world-growth may be likened unto a handful of 
acorns cast on the earth, and one of them felt the sun- 
shine and the dew, and received them as coming from 
Heaven, and her heart swelled within her till the smooth 
hard prison-house that held it, burst apart with the 
power of the life that was in it. And then the conser- 
vative acorns around it began to cry out, " O foolish 
acorn ! when Heaven g'ave thee so smooth and beautiful 
a shell to protect thee from the cold rain and withering 
sunshine, why wilt thou ungratefully despise its gifts, 
and choose these restless elements for thy companions, 
when they wiU certainly destroy thee? A while ago 
thou wast an acorn, but now thou s^vt nothing but a mis- 
shapen mass of fermenting material." 

But the acorn felt the inspiration of life, and answered, 
as inspired enthusiasts always answer, in a language her 

6* 



114 LICHEN TUFTS. 

eisters could not understand — and they chid her, as one 
gone mad. 

But after a time, she stretched out her hands so far 
to embrace the free air, that her two first leaves, all 
wrinkled and ridged, spread out in the sunshine, and 
her feet clung closely to the moist earth, and she stood, 
a living, growing thing. 

And her sisters said, " Who would think that nonde- 
script, bold green monster, staring in the face of the 
sun, had ever been a beautiful white acorn, modestly 
folded in her brown house ? But she will soon reap the 
reward of her temerity, for one baby footstep would 
crush her to pieces now, while we are as safe as ever." 

But the young plant felt her soul swell with more life, 
and as she looked up to the quiet stars beckoning above, 
her heart opened, and began to put forth a new leaf — 
thinner, and wider, and deeper colored than the first ; 
and she rejoiced — for growth was so happy, and so glori- 
ous I But when her sleepy sisters awoke in the morning, 
and saw her again expanded and changed, they cried 
out the more exceedingly against her, for her fickleness, 
and told her to behold how constant they were to first 
principles and old truths. But as the plant grew, 
neither by creed nor theory, nor even by reason, but by 
instinct, and inspiration, and necessity, she was " grieved 
in her heart," and having no cavilling sophistry where- 
with to answer their stereotyped logic, and the living 
words of truth " being as foolishness " in their ears, she 
grew on and " answered not a word." 

But when the Summer was ended and Autumn came 
and painted the green leaf red, and took away the first 
pair, the sisters said, " Behold ! she is dying ! The frost 



THE PERFECTION OF THE NATURAL. 115 

cuts through her flimsy foliage, and destroys her, but 
we are snug and safe where nature put us, and defy the 
storms. Let us take warning by her folly, and be con- 
tended with our condition." But the young oak cried 
out earnestly, that nature meant she should grow, or 
she would not have given her the power, and that she 
should not die but live. And they said, " Then was it 
intended that man should sin, or he would not have had 
the ability!" and they laughed her to scorn. 

Then the snow came, and they slept. 

But when the "Winter was over and gone,'' and 
Spring filled the oak with fresh vigor, it branched and 
spread, and grew and thrived luxuriantly, and the fault- 
finding acorns grew silent, or only grumbled in whispers ; 
but afterwards when the oak found honor, and the acorns 
were unnoticed, they began to envy their sister, and 
take pride in her, and try to imitate her, but decay had 
fixed upon them, and w^orms gnawed into them, and 
they learned, too late, that w^hen nature bestowed sun- 
shine and rain, she meant they should be used, as well 
as her temporary sheltering gift of shells. 

So the human part of the natural world, like the life- 
inspired acorn, shall grow in spite of sneers and cavil — 
in spite of frost and storm, of time and delay — and be- 
come beautiful and glorious, even as the oak became 
monarch of the forest. 

Men have already begun to listen for the true teach- 
ings of the great Past, which stands, sybil-like, chanting 
her oracle and prophecies, and pointing to the records 
of her progressive march, graven on all the rocks adown 
the stream of time. 

To those who have learned to hear aright, her song 



116 LICHEN TUFTS. 

teaches us to struggle upwards towards the future, as she 
struggled to reach the present, ever nearing that great 
object of her search and ours — the highest ideal — the 
truest truth — the ultimate perfection. 
The poet tells us that 

" There is a mighty chain of being 
Lessening down, from Infinite perfection 
To the brink of dreary nothing" — 

and it is true. The converse of it is also true, and we 
are tending upwards in the ascending scale, enlarging 
and growing, from the atom up to Deity, and when the 
struggle shall cease, and that harmonious march up 
towards the infinite — that march which is to be trodden 
through eternity, to the music of the spheres, shall be 
begun, then shall each item of the universe in the per- 
fection of its own nature 

*' Be one with God, and God is All in AU." 



A PILGRIM PAGAN. 

The dusky twilight of all time had come, 
Earth's long and stormy day was closing fast, 
And night, not earth-born like all other nights, 
But born of space as stars are, swallowed up 
The lingering relics of the by-gone light. 
The Norsemen's fabled Raggnarokk had come. 
When all the Gods of earth were to be judged 
And swept away, and only " He whose name 
No man dare utter," should be Lord of all. 
And he, the fiery king of endless life, 
Judged the pale spectres of the waning world. 

" Come forth !" said the Eternal : from the tomb 
The long dead Ages started back to life. 
And bursting through the mould and dust of death, 
Rehearsed the deeds of every by-gone day. 

Thus witnessed one before that awful court : 

There have been Angels, tho' in various guise, 
From the beginning through the lapse of time ; 
Each martyr'd in his turn a thousand ways, 
Each burthened with a host of evil names. 
And scourged, and mocked, and cast aside in scorn, 
Trampled and hated ; yet 'twas marvel strange 
That while the Angels thus were bufieted. 
They each had altars whereon incense burned, 



118 LICHEN TUFTS. 

And they, the buffeters, sung psalms of praise, 
And offered incense to the names of those 
Whose incarnations they despised and slew. 

The Angel, Truth, had temples old and new, 
And throngs of worshippers bowed to her name ; 
And yet the very temple's selves — their pomp 
Of marble colonnade, and fretted roof, 
Gold-gleaming spire, rare woods of distant climes, 
And costly deckings — were but wooden cheats. 
Poor, painted make-believes, whose honest cracks 
Showed the plain pine beneath the rosewood lie 
And rich mahogany falsehood, deftly told 
By cunning workmen and their pots of paint. 

This shabby showroom of men's vanities. 
In solemn mockery named the House of Truth, 
Was filled to flooding with a motley throng, 
Who went — because it was the day to go — 
Because it was the custom of the place — 
Because the bell rung, and their clothes were on, 
And folks would notice if they didn't go. 
And folks would see their finery if they did. 

Rolled thro' the vaulted roof the organ's peal, 
And the sweet chant of voices in the choir : 
The hymn once uttered by some earnest soul 
Enhedged in darkness, seeking for the light, 
Was chanted parrot-like by choral bands. 
Who lost the meaning in the silv'ry sound. 
Thus ran the burden of the solemn song : 



A PILGRIM PAGAN. 119 

All art Thou, but we are nothing, 
Help us, Oh ! thou Truth sublime ! 

We are false, but Thou art faithful, 
Teach us all Thyself divine ! 

Wait we mourning round thy altars, 
For the life that Thou dost give, 

Take our broken hearts and heal them ! 
All our worthless gifts receive ! 

Followed the prayer in measured accents doled, 
And sermon, tedious as an oft-told tale. 
And then a pause. In thro' the outer door. 
There passed a being most serene and calm. 
And stood before the altar in the aisle, 
And thus he spoke : — " Oh ! fellow worshippers ! 
I come from a far realm away to join 
The congregation of the friends of Truth, 
Who has no temples in the land I left. 

" There is within me that which turns from wrong, 

Which shrinks from treach'rous deeds and lying lips. 

An outgrowth unto all sincerity — 

And with such aspirations as shall grow 

To deeds, my spirit searches for the Truth — 

The infinite — unfailing — utmost truth ! 

Enrol my name among the names of those 

Who seek in her the ever highest good.'* 

He paused, and ladies smiled behind their fans. 
To think that such a funny looking man, 



120 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Witli such queer clothes as this strange pilgrim wore, 
Should make a speech like that, so out of place, 
When no one asked him, and none other spoke. 
Could he not wait till the appointed time 
For offering names ? And then he could have made 
A speech, and worn a garb, more a-la-mode. 

The men drew down the corners of their mouths, 
And looked half sneering towards their shining boots, 
And wondered what the stranger's business was. 
That would allow him to afford to be 
So very much in love with thriftless Truth. 

A few, more zealous than the rest, were glad — 

Some that the neighboring temples all would gaze 

With envious admiration on this new 

Converted heathen, that none other had, 

But was a unique feather in their cap. 

Some liked his eloquence, and some were pleased 

To hear their language with strange accent mouthed 

In voice so musical by mouth so fine ; 

And some were glad that their monotonous lives 

Had had at last an interesting break, 

And their stale gossip a fresh flavoring spice 

For the next week at least. But there were some, 

" A beggarly account" of " nobodies," 

'Tis true, yet still a living few, whose hearts 

Were thrilled with deeper joy than tongue may speak, 

That there was one in all the earth to dare 

Exile and ridicule for Truth's dear sake. • 

Then spoke the minister : " If you have read 
Our Articles of Faith, and can confess 



A PILGRIM PAGAN. 

The Creed and Catechism without flaw, 

After initial rites, if none dissent, 

We will admit you to our loving band." 

The half-converted pagan looked aghast ! 

" I never heard of all the things you name, 

Nor can conceive of an initial rite 

Would make me love Truth more than I do now !" 

*' 'Tis not for that," replied the minister, 
*' 'Tis but a form of setting you apart 
From all the world that does not follow Truth, 
I will repeat the creed to you, and if 
You can confess it afterward, 'tis done. 
Say, ' I beUeve in Truth, the pure, the whole, 
That she hath many eyes that she may see 
All that exists ; some scanning up, some down. 
And some the limitless expanse between, 
And hath as many tongues to speak of all 
That she beholdeth in the universe,' 
Can you repeat thus much ?" 

" And why should I ? 
For I know naught of this, and how believe ? 
It matters nothing to my love, if Truth 
Hath but one eye, or two, or scores of them, 
So that she still be Truth. Why should I care ? 
She may be many tongued, for aught I know ; 
I would she had ten thousand living tongues 
To speak in all the earth, and thus cry down 
The clamorous lies with which the welkin rings. 
I would exult in such triumphal song, 
But I will listen with love's keenest ear. 
In every tempest lull of falsehood's storm, 



121 



122 LICHEN TUFTS. 

For the deep whispers of her still, small voice, 
When she is bidden not to speak at all ; 
And when men make it crime to speak her words, 
Then will I speak them faithfully as now — 
Will wear her badge when 'tis a badge of shame 
And honor her thro' sneers and bitter scorn, 
And tho' I have not numbered all her tongues, 
I love and I believe in utmost Truth — 
Pass by the rest, I cannot say it now I" 

" But 'tis essential that you should believe, 
And if 'tis ignorance that makes you halt 
Become enlightened 'ere you seek to pass 
The sacred pale of our especial Truth, 
Outside of which all other Truths are vain !" 

" I know," the heathen said, " I must have all, 

That one great central part of Truth withdrawn 

Will make all others seem but partial truths. 

And half-truths are part falsehoods at the best, 

I want the whole, what is entire, alive. 

Breathing and throbbing, quick and warm with life, 

A dead Truth is as worthless as a lie ; 

If I take verity at second hand. 

And say 'tis so, because you say 'tis so. 

What is it better than dead truth to me ? 

A falsehood were as quickening to the soul!'* 

" But you want Faith to guide where knowledge fails 
We must believe those things we cannot know." 

Slowly the puzzled heathen turned away. 
And stood alone beneath the endless sky, 



A PILGRIM PAGAN. 123 

Baffled of human aid lie must toil on, 

And slowly proving all things, hold the good, 

The good alone, against the faithless world. 

The garb those sneering saints had thought so odd 

Around his great, true heart he wrapped, and thus 

Unto his inmost soul the hero spoke : 

" "Without conditions will I come to thee, 

Thou all pervadmg Soul! The cumb'rous creed — 

The cramping rite — the mouthing of strange words — 

I leave for those who find a use for them. 

But Thou, whose speech the soul can understand, 

In the dead silence of the voiceless night, 

Thy words come to my feverish soul as rain 

Comes dropping on the dust-encumbered grass, 

And freshens all its wilting stems and leaves 

"With its cool message from the far off clouds. 

My soul is drooping 'neath its gathered dust — 

Drop down thy starry dews and quench its thirst, 

Oh Truth divine ! and make me strong 

To seek Thee evermore — and seek alone !" 

The congregation in a motley stream 
Had poured out past him with averted eyes 
And left him as a harmless half-crazed man 
A stranger and alone among the tombs. 

The witness ages vanished from the stand. 
But, by the throne of Him who judged the world 
Calm stood the steadfast seeker of the Truth 
As one whose utmost toil was lost in peace. 



A DREAM ANTHEM. 

PRIEST. 
Believe ye in the Lord of Hosts, the Ruler of the sky, 
The universal 3Iother heart, the Lowliest and Most 

High? 
Believe ye Him, the Soul of all, who wears eternal space. 
And lives, the moving vital thought of each created 

place ? 

CONGREGATION. 

Aye ! Aye ! believe we in the Lord ! and worship from 

afar 
The King upon his great white throne above the farthest 

star ! 
We build up temples to his name, which pierce the very 

sky, 
And shout our praises loud and long that he may heed 
our cry. 

PRIEST. 

Believe ye in life's holy Truths, whate'er may be their 

name; 
Tho' scorned amid earth's chase for wealth, for pleasure 

or for fame ? 
Believe ye in the soul of Love, which claims each living 

thing, 
However low, disgraced, or mean, the source from which 

they spring ? 



A DKEAM ANTHEM. 125 

f 

CONGREGATION. 

Aye! we believe in lofty Truth! Truth is great and 

nobly born ! 
But bow we not to thing so mean as to be sport for 

scorn ! 
And we believe in Love divine, all conquering and sweet, 
But waste it not on outcast ones in the prison and the 

street. 

PEIEST. 

Well speak ye of twin Love and Truth ! right nobly 

born are they ! 
The right hand and the left of Him, the king to whom 

ye pray ! 
Eternal as our Sovereign Lord — the Lord of Heaven's 

high host, 
The outcast Love ! the slighted Truth ! God's Son and 

Holy Ghost ! 

Look not above the farthest star ! God whispers in the 

air. 
And instinct with his breathing life glows nature every 

where. 
The time will come ! The time will come, when on every 

stick and stone 
The blindest eye can but behold the Eternal's living 

throne ! 

On all the doors, on all the walls, from the threshold to 

the eaves. 
On all the buds and bursting flowers, ripe fruits and 

trembli^ig leaves. 



126 LICHEN TUFTS. 

And on all things living shall ye see, as written on a 

scroll, 
In characters of light glow forth the universal soul ! 

Believe ye in the Lord of Hosts ? 
(Congregation.) Aye ! believe we as before ! 
(Priest.) Believe ye that all Truth is God ? 
(Congregation.) Aye ! and worship evermore ! 

ALL. 

We accept Thee, God of Mercy ! Love, and Truth, and 

Life art thou ! 
Accept us while we bow before Thee ! To no other do 

we bow. 



THE LOST LAKE. 

Near Sraethport, in Pennsylvania, there is a great pile of conglome- 
rate rocks, known by the name of the Devil's Den. During a pic-nic 
at the place once, a gentleman who demurred at the popular mode of 
devoting all grandeur to "the gentleman in black," proposed taking 
the first initial of each lady's name then present, and coining a name 
for the place. The name was Eel-e-a-ha-o-aa see, so suggestively 
Indiany in sound, that the following commemorative poem grew out 
of it ever so many years ago : — 



PART FIRST. 

Nature in wayward mood had thrown 
O'er yon mountain's top a giant stone ; 
The river's waves no longer rushed — 
The Avild bird's warblings Avere hushed — 
The woods grew dark with sickening fear 

Its heart-pulse faint and cold, 
As downward on their wild career 

The broken fragments rolled. 
There in rough disorder piled, 
O'er that mountain wide and wild , 
'Mid tangled laurels, dark and rude, 
The rocks grew grey in solitude. 
The loosened earth slid slowly down, 
Leaving the hill-side bare and brown. 
It left the mountain's hoary head. 
And rested in the valley's bed ; 



128 LICHEN TUFTS. 

The river's waters sought in vain v 

To trace their pebbly track again. 
Back to their fountains, dark and cold, 
The imprisoned waters slowly rolled ; 
'Till upward 'gainst the opposing heap 

They wider, mightier, rose ; 
Then o'er its brink they wildly leap, 

Free from their dull repose. 
The river's dried, deserted track 
Welcomed the fresh, pure waters back. 

High on the mountain's dusky brow. 
Defying wintry storms and snow. 
Three Avails of solid stone uprose. 
And o'er their massive, grim repose, 
Rested a roof of one great stone, 
With creeping evergreens o'ergrown. 
By the low doorway on the east 
Sat that lone mountain's hermit priest. 
Near, thro' mossy crevice, crept 
Waters where the lichens slept ; 
Drop by drop those waters fell 
In a moss-enamelled well, 
Near that grey old hermit's cell. 

Across the lake, and on its brim. 

In the forest's shadow dim, 

A wigwam raised its lowly head 

Close beside the water's bed. 

And in that hut a warrior bold 

In prosperous peace was growing old. 

His sons were '' swiftest in the race," 

Their bows were surest in the chase ; 



THE LOST LAKE. ' 129 

His daughters, with fond mothers' pride, 

Their children's tottering footsteps guide, 

Save one — the flower of vale or hill, 

Who watched, and loved, and cheered him still. 

Evening was rosy in the west, 

And tipped with gold each mountain's crest. 

When a tall form, as oft before, 

Darkened that lowly wigwam door ; 

Strong was his soul and firm his tread. 

Ere the low doorway bowed his head ; — 

He spoke ; Nayugeh could not brook 

The lightning of the chieftam's look. 

" Old Eagle of the pine clad hills ! 

A day of blood is breaking ! 
Sleep no more by purling rills, 

Thy warriors are waking. 
Pale children of the rising day 
Come like wolves upon their prey ; 
Like wolves upon the wild deer's track ! 
Like panthers we will send them back ! 
To-morrow is our council held." 
Then forth he hied — the war-whoop yelled — 
And to some other brave's abode 
The Cougar of the mountain strode. 

The council met, then from the earth 
The red war-hatchet sprang to birtli ; 
The war-pipe's smoke 'tween the old oak lunbs 
Disturbed the wood-wren's matin hymns ; 
And then arose to the peaceful skies 
The smoke of the white dog sacrifice, 
6 



130 LICHEN TUFTS. 

And to that sacrificial feast 
Came Eel-e-a-ha-o-aa-see's priest, 
From the lonely-mountain side, 
Where none but he might dare abide. 
Where naught polluting e'er might dwell. 
From the moss-grown hermit's cell, 
Where he his sacred treasure kept, 
Guarding while he walked or slept. 
That treasure that he deemed divine. 
The sack of holy medicine ; 
Like the seraph-guarded ark. 

Of which Scripture's pages teU ; 
Like a strayed and stranger spark, 

From the fires of Israel ! 

'Twas over ! Then from south and north. 
From east and west went warriors forth ; 
Armed with war-club, spear, and bow. 

With tomahawk and knife ; 
Strong hands were there to deal each blow ! 

Strong hearts for blood and strife ! 
Then arose the war-whoop's fearful yell. 
Wide over plain, and hill, and dell. 
And echo came back from hill and glen, 
Like the yell of demons instead of men ; 
And echo caught up the hideous cry. 
And bore it aloft toward the burning sky. 
Then silence o'er the valley crept, 
As if all things living slept. 
The wild birds' morning songs were o'er, 
The hum of man was heard no more, — 
Not a breath of wind there stirred. 



THE LOST LAKE. 131 

Not the faintest sound was heard, 

Save where the lake leaped from its thrall, 

Dashed the noisy waterfall ; 

But the leaves its babbling drowned 

Into a sadder, softer sound. 

The smoky air wrapped every hiU, 

And seemed to hush its waters still ; 

But the silence was too deep. 

Too unnatural for sleep. 

In Eel-e-a-ha-o-aa-see's cell. 

The priest was chanting o'er his spell, 

While watching, more in awe than fear, 

Stood the father of the youthful Deer, 

While she, Nayugeh, stood afar. 

And prayed to the God of peace and war. 

To send her Father safely back 

From the war-j)ath's dangerous track. 

Then in her heart a stifled prayer, 

That to breathe she did not dare, 

For the Cougar that stood gazing on. 

The Hermit and his myrmidon. 

The Hermit watched his magic fire, 

Whose blue flame flickered pale and dire ; 

As he muttered his spells in a tongue unknown 

To a fiercer blaze was his watch-fire blown ; 

Quickly the red flame leaped on high. 

With a glory that paled the burning sky, 

And eagerly seizing a pine tree's stem. 

It crowned its cone with a diadem ; 

With its wreaths of smoke and its tongues of flame, 



132 LICHEN TUFTS. 

A terrific torcli that tree became. 
Then sudden the yell of the Hermit rang, 
Till the echoing hills caught up the clang — 
Then sunk his voice to a muttering tone — 
Then chanted as if to himself alone. 

" Not till yon lake shall cease to spread, 
Over the quiet valley's bed, 
Not till the weeds that in it stand, 
Flourish upon the naked land — 
Not till its barrier is strewn, 
Where Nonandah's limpid waters moan, 
Not till yon lake deserts the glen. 
Shall we yield to a race of paler men — 
( When the Lake of the Forest no more shall be. 
Our tribe shall die like the foam of the sea. !" 

He ceased his low, complaining wail. 
The warriors sought the foemen's trail — 
Nayugeh sought with wondering gaze. 
The pine tree torch's brilUant blaze, 
Which stood aloft like a beacon light, 
Lighting the shades of coming night, — 

" Why follows the Deer on the Cougar's track ? 

Will the Wild Doe welcome the Panther back ?" 

Nayugeh turned with a startled sigh 

To meet the dark inquiring eye 

Of a sister beloved who was standing nigh. 

" Come, sister, my lonely wigwam share — 

'Tis gloomy unless the loved are there, 

The Eagle has flown toward the morning sky. 



THE LOST LAKE. 133 

There are none to comfort or keep thee nigh, 
But we'll gather herbs from the solemn wood, 
And draw the fish from the silver flood. 
And watch and wait till our warriors come 
Together to welcome the wearied home." 

PAET SECOND. 

" I came, O Wild Doe of the hills ! 
Back to my native rocks and rills, 
With my life blood ebbing slow away, 
From a wound whose bleeding I cannot stay. 
Ye cannot follow on our track, 
And I may never more come back ; 
Where canst thou flee in the hour of wrath, 
When the Eagle has fallen in war's red path, 
When the Cougar is far from Nayugeh's call, 
Will the child of the forest die in thrall ?" 

Nayugeh had watched his kindling eye — 
Her bosom was burning to make reply ; 
But a daughter's love and a maiden's fears 
Burst forth in a passionate gush of tears ; 
From her sobbing lips no answer came. 
Save a murmuring of her father's name. 

" Cold on the far off plain of death. 
Sighed forth thy father's dying breath ; 
And I alone am left to tell. 
Where the Eagle of the mountains fell. 
No pale face bore his scalp away. 
He lies no colder there than they." 



134 LICHEN TUFTS. 

" Thou hast avenged him then !" she said, 
Raising her lone and sorrowing head, 
*' But hast come alone from that dreadful fray ? 
My Warrior brothers, where are they ?" 

" Cold on the battle field they he !" 

Was the mountain Cougar's sad reply, 

*' Our shattered tribe are gathering, 

Weak like the flow of a sun-dried spring ; 

But the pale men came hke a river's tide. 

When the snow melts ofi" the brown hill side ; 

Whither, oh ! Doe of the forest dark ! 

Wilt guide thy canoe of the birchen bark ? 

Where, oh ! maiden mild and meek ! 

Hide where the pale men will not seek, 

For their hounds can follow thy footsteps well ?" 

Nayugeh murmured, " I cannot tell !" 

" Follow me, IN'ayugeh, in this mountain path, 
What though the storm God growl in wrath ? 
Is the eyrie rocked eaglet of tempests afraid !" 
" No !" said the voice of the following maid. 

On, dark rolled the river, its wild rising flood. 
Fierce howled the storm through the loud wailing 

wood, 
Yet up through the shrieking tempest's wrath, 
They follow that tree strewn mountam path, 
Up, past the Hermit's empty cell, 
Up, where the trees wild crashing fell — 
Up, where each grim rock raised its head, 
Where Eel-e-a-ha-o-aa-see spread 



THE LOST LAKE. 



135 



Its platform dark of giant stones, 
Above the wrung trees' crashing groans, 
Here the Mountain Cougar climbed at last, 
And paused — ^liis clambering was past. 
At length Nayugeh near him drew, 
' Her weary march was ended too. 

A ragged aisle the wind had made 

Down before them to the glade. 

The pent lake's waters rose up still. 

Chafing the foot of the rocky hill. 

Ah ! never before since those cabins stood, 

In the shadowy marge of the wide-spread wood. 

Had risen so high that river's flood — 

When the mountains shook and the valleys groan, 

With an echoing crash in thunder tone — 

The barrier burst ! The Lake was gone !— 

And the cabins that stood on the outlet's shore, 

Were lost in the waves and seen no more. 

« We are the last !" the Cougar said, 
" The lake is gone — our tribe is dead — 
Ere night shall darken o'er the sky, 
The Cougar of the Hills must die. 
And one lone Doe in the pale man's path. 
Is all that is left to stem his wrath—'-' 

«' Oh better, far better to die with thee !" 
Responded the wild Doe earnestly. 
How glow'd o'er the face of the dying chief. 
The light of a smile as bright as brief! 
Then answered he with a deep drawn sigh. 



136 LICHEN TUTTS. 

" I brought thee here with me to die ! 
O ! deeply these rifted rocks between, 
With a feathery fern and a laurel screen, 
To whisper with winds that are floating by, 
'Twere sweet for the last of the tribe to lie — 
'Twere sweet for the Panther and Doe to die !" 

The moss grown rocks the notes prolong. 
As they sang together their funeral song. 

Howl ! tempest in the forest, howl ! 

One tribe no more shall heed or hear ! 

Above them shall the wild wolf prowl. 

And undisturbed pursue the deer. 

« 
"Weak are the hands once strong in battle, — 

Cold are the hearts once warming our home,- 

The bones of our braves the foxes shaU rattle, 

Over each heart's deserted stone. 

We come to Thee, great ruling Spirit ! 

To thy happiest hunting ground — 
The land that the good and the brave inherit. 

That the pale face has not found ! 

They ceased, the Cougar's failing arm. 

Was round the form he loved the best, 
He seemed to shelter her from harm — 

He looked as if he but caressed. 
Then kneeling on the giddy brink, 

He sheathed his knife within her heart- 
Then in his own. The mosses drink 

The blood of those who would not part. 



THE LOST LAKE. 137 

O ! deeply those rifted rocks between, 
With a feathery fern and a laurel screen, 
To whisper with Avinds that are floating by. 
The last of the tribe of the Eagle lie. 
The Lake of the Forest no more shall be, 
And its tribe are gone like the foam of the sea. 



6* 



"LOVE IN A COTTAaE." 

Part I. The Prelude. 

Orthodox according to Romances ; Apocryphal accord- 
ing to Fact. 

Near a " dark rolling river" by " willows o'erhung," 

Stood a "lowly wMte cottage" with shutters of 
green, • 

Where the creeping vines round the windows clung, 
And the " gnarled old oak" its shadow flung, 

A broad armed and beautiful screen ; 
Round one room the flowers were gromng 

" With a mute caress," 
As tho' thro' shadowy foliage showing 

" The inmate's loveliness." 
For " lovely as the morning" smiled 
That " sweet and lovely" " forest child." 
Her eyes were " liquid hazel," beaming 

'Neath the " dark fringe of each lid," 
Her " alabaster neck'' was gleaming. 

Half by its " curling drapery hid." 
Her beauty might bewitch the sight 
Of any frigid anchorite ; 

But the " soul that beamed within" 

Was something deeper than the skin ! 



LOVE IN A COTTAGE. 139 

Young Oscar from the mill one day, 

Chanced to be wandering by that way, 

When to milk the cows, thro' the river's slime 

"Waded the barefooted Angeline. 

They met beneath the spreading tree, 

And " their first glance" " sealed their destiny !" 

While seated on the milking stool, 

Beneath the willow's shade so cool, 

The maiden sang a song more sweet 

Than songs which summer evening greet. 

A joyous thrill through each nerve sprang 

As the music tone through his young heart rang — 

Full many a glance she sidelong cast. 

Ere those hours on golden wings had passed. 

His " manly form" and comely face. 

He bore with manhood's budding grace ; 

And his voice, tho' low, was deep and full. 

As he sang with the maid on the milking stool. 

He carried the pail, o'er^opped with foam. 

To Angeline's vine-covered bright " happy home," 

Then through that soft and star-lit sabbath eve 

He sat on the porch by young AngeUne's side ; 
Bright visions of hope together they weave. 

Ere the " launch on life's dark fathomless tide." 
They part when the waning moon rose bright, 
And shed o'er earth its " silvery light" — 
If you wish to know what vows they made. 
What deeds they did, and what says they said, 
You must ask of somebody wise in such lore. 
For I wasn't there, and can tell no more. 
Save that ever when seven days wheeled their flight, 



140 LICHEN TUFTS. 

And bro't again the Sabbath night, 

Did Oscar sit by that cottage fire, 

And list to a tale from the grey-haired sire ; 

And tho' long and tedious the tale became. 

To Oscar's ears it was still the same ; 

For no heed could he give to the tale of strife, 

He could only think of his future wife. 

Tho' mute and attentive he seemed to be, 

His thoughts were working busily, 

As he built a castle of azure air, 

In which to dwell with his chosen fair. 

Thus time flew by, as he always will. 

Let us wish e'er so much to make him stand still. 

And Oscar so long had worked in the mill. 

That his earnings would buy him a snug little farm ; 
So away to his lot in the woods went he 
To fell and to burn each tall forest tree, 

And make him a cabin tight and warm. 
Thought he, " when 'tis finished, and snug, and neat, 
I'll throw myself at Angeline's feet, 

And tell her to name the day ; 
Then hither we'll hie from the world away, 
And spend in labor the hours gay. 

Till eve brings a season of quiet rest ; 

And then together in our nice little nest. 
We'll sing some ballad or ' olden lay,' 

And be ' purely and perfectly blest.' " 



LOVE IN A COTTAGE. 141 



Part II. 



The Afterdap ignored hy romances — being the main 
body of lifers matter-of-fact. 

'Twas done — ^the hymenial knot was tied — 

The maid of sixteen was a bride ; 

The groom was of a riper age, 

For twenty years had made him sage ; 

That sagesse made him build a mill 

UlDon his winding mountain rill ; 

Hard by he reared his humble cot, 

Nor envies kings their higher lot. 

Thither his slow ox-team he drives, 

Dragging behind a groaning cart. 
Which shrieked as if a cat's nine lives 

Were in it, struggling to depart. 
No wonder ; cart of mortal make 
Could not endure it — it must break. 
Just as it jolted o'er a stone 

High swelling in the road. 
The cart gave one prodigious groan, 

And fell splash in the mud ! 
The axle broke, what could he do. 
Unless he sunk in the mud-hole too ? 
Despair seized on him for a time, 
But loosed his hold as Angeline 
Proposed the furniture to save 
From sinking in a miry grave. 
He seized the tho't — Avith all his might 
He threw the goods both left and right, 



142 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Resolved to resurrect the cart, 

He made an axle-tree of wood, 

Which, if it wasn't very good. 
Still served to cheer his heart. 
And bear his replaced chattels on, 
*' Over root and mossy stone." 

Tho' the honeymoon was over, 

Oscar Rose was still a lover. 

And felt a lover's full vexation 

Because it rained " like all creation," 

And March winds blew their fiercest chime. 

To welcome home his Angeline. 

" Ah, love !" he cried, " what shall we do ? 

The roof leaks streams and puddles too, 

But here's a place quite dry for you." 

" Oh, well ;" she said, " TU go to work, 

And cook potatoes, eggs, and pork. 

If you'll set up the stove — " 
" Yes, yes !" and then to work he went. 

While rain his garments soak ; 
But part of the stove was badly bent. 

And part was fully broke ; 
But they fixed it up, and made it do. 
And Angeline cooked a smoky stew, 
(For the cracked stove leaked both smoke and ashes, 

And the wind in fitful gusts 
The rain through every chink hole dashes, 

And blew in pecks of moss and dust.) 
They ate it (not the dust^ but stew). 
And went to work with zeal anew. 
Oscar o'erhead stopped out the sky. 



LOVE IN A COITAGE. 143 

The cracks were stopped — the floor mopped dry — 
And then fatigued beyond all measure, 
They went to sleep and snored with pleasure. 

Next morn the sun rose clear and bright, 
They eat their meal with appetite, 
And Oscar hastened back to town. 

To fetch another load ; 
This time he didn't quite break down, 

Nor upset in the road. 
So everything was "fixed" all right 
Before there closed another night ; 
So they were settled in a trice 
Snug as a nest of tiny mice. 

Oscar's father died, and his stepmother came, 

With her mother who was blind, and deaf, and lame, 

To live with him and his deary — 
Tho' deaf, not dumb, was Grandame Hill, 
For her tongue ran on, like the cork leg still, 

Tho' all ears with din were weary ; 
Then she was so cross she couldn't be endured, 
Excepting because she couldn't be cured. 

The stepdame was one vast interrogation — 
Minding all business that wasn't her own — 
She would whine all the time to make her griefs known. 

And scold with a voice like the Bull of Bashan ; 
Then talk of her pious faith and labor, 
An^ then, next minute, slander her neighbor. 
Angeline had six " sweet little dears," 
That oft got boxed on their " sweet little" ears. 
By the stepdame's grandmotherly hand. 



144 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Because in the way they happened to stand, 
Or could not reply to some interrogation 
That she made in her tours of investigation. 

No secret cell did the house afford 
Where Angeline could hide a secret hoard, 

Or where aught could secret be ; 
For every drawer, and trunk, and chest. 
Was an object of curious interest. 

The stepdame all must see ; 
If opposed she'd sigh as if wounded to death. 
And say with a kind of sobbing breath,/ 
" Ah, why am I doomed on earth to live. 
And no respect from my child receive ?" 
Then she would cry and sulk for a week, 
And her mahce dire on the children wreak. 
Then she'd a daughter, a squint-eyed girl. 

Who'd married, in spite of her friends, 
An ugly, piratical looking churl. 

Who, to make most ample amends 
For all his numerous peccadillos. 

And to appease a fit of rage. 

Took an anonymous pilgrimage 
Across the foaming Erie's billows, 
And ne'er returned to Sylvia more ; 
But left to heal her widowed heart. 
That his desertion might make sore, 

A small edition of himself, 

A little, silly, roaring elf. 
That Sylvia's switch oft caused to smart. 
Her husband's debts his goods consume, 
So Sylvia had no house or home ; 



LOVE IN A COTTAGE. 145 

So trusting unto Providence, 
And her step-brother's benevolence, 
She took herself and darling boy, 
His bounteous mansion to enjoy. 

If Sylvia's baby mightn't run over 

Every child of Angeline's, 
She'd tell Dame Hill, and her own cross mother, 

And then would follow a chorus of whines. 
If Oscar and Angeline ever went out, 

Mrs. Rose and Sylvia 'd pursue them — 
" Why, children ! what are you talking about ?" 
Mrs. Rose would say, and begin to pout, 

" I wish the world only knew them ! 
They treat me as if I were only a stranger I 

Stop talking if I but come nigh ! 
I believe they'd grudge me hay in a manger !" 

And then she'd begin to cry. 

Dame Hill would tell monstrous long stories, 

So loud that herself could hear. 
About her good man's fights with the tories. 

Her husband, that "poor lost dear." 
She had placed goods in Oscar's possession, 

Worth some thirty dollars and odd, 
And she deemed it a horrid aggression 

If Oscar hung not on her nod. 
" Ingrate ! I brought him his wealth. 

Now he won't mind a word that I say ! 
Oh ! if I could but have my health, 

I'd go with my money away !" 



146 LICHEN TUFTS. 

" And just see how poor Silvy is used !" 

Mrs. Rose then put in her word — 
" I never saw girl so abused ! 

Of such abuse I never have heard ! 
She helps Angy wash, and takes care of her child' 
(Just see what a heap on the table they've piled) ; 
She takes care of the chambers, and waits upon you, 
And all this she does without wages, too ! 
Poor girl ! because she's unfortunate. 
Such advantage as this of her misery take ! 
Oh ! shame on the wretches w^ho thus can doom 
An orphan widow to poverty's gloom ! 
Make use of her labor, and when 'tis done. 
Give her only support for herself and son !" 

" Yes, shameless indeed !" cried Grandame Hill, 

" Oscar has a farm, and house, and mill, 

And money can raise when he wants, if he will — 

Why don't he reward her well ?" 
Dame Hill had heard what her daughter said, 
For she spoke in a tone that might wake the dead, 

And shame St. Paul's church bell — 
Then both the old " ladies " began to cry, 
And wish that they might quickly die — 

Then scolded, sighed, and sobbed all at once — 
Dame Hill must hear every word that was said. 
Or else she'd take it in her obstinate head 

That they thought her a deaf old dunce ; 
So she was apprised of all that went on, 
Tho' her sight, and hearing, and strength were gone ! 

There was a bachelor uncle — a drunken sinner — 



LOVE IN A COTTAGE. 



U1 



Was too stingy to afford his own bread and dinner, 
Half the time loafed at Oscar's good table- 
Gave orders about managing farm and stable- 
Taught the children to smoke, and drink, and chew, 
And say with each breath the innocents drew 

Some profane or unseemly word ; 
Until the parents turned him out. 
And he left with an injured air and pout ; 

And the next thing that they heard, 
Was that the wretch had suddenly died. 
And left his wealth to Frederic Hyde, 

Sylvia's idiot baby ! 
'Twould be twenty years before he could touch 
The hoards that cost his uncle so much. 

Yet Sylvia now thought her a lady ! 

Oscar and Angeline lived in fear. 

Lest all their words Dame Rose should hear ; 

They dare not talk till she was asleep, 

And then awake they couldn't keep, 

'Till one Sabbath they strayed to a beechen grove, 

To talk of the days of their early love. 

« I had dreamed," said Oscar, " of a happy lot, 
With friends surrounding our little cot. 

Ourselves doing good and no evil — 
And we do do good— there are grandma and mother. 
They scold enough to fright the devil. 
And we bear it and let it pass over. 
1 thought when we married and moved here home, 
That we would quietly live alone, 

Enjoying felicity pure ; 



148 LICHEN TUFTS. 

'Stead of that, what quiet or peace do we get ? 

Grandma's in one perpetual fret, 

And mother, who sees, torments us more yet. 

What evils we have to endure !" 
" Then mother scolds," began Angeline, 
*' If I dare to think that the house is mine — 
If I don't do as she bids she begins to cry, 
And say, ' Of course you know better than I ; 
I'm but an old fool you all despise !" 
And she i>ouys out a torrent of sighs. 

And grumbles and scolds all the time. 
Then she knocks round the children as if they w^ere wood, 
That she wanted to hurt if she possibly could, 
And complains of Sylvia's hard lot — 
I ventured to hint we'd build them a cot. 
Where they in tranquil peace might rest, 
Where the children would ne'er their quiet molest !" 
" That's the thing !" cried Oscar, " The very plan ! 
I'll build the cottage as soon as I can. 

And be rid of this troublesome pest !" 
" Stop ! stop ! not so fast !" cried Angeline ; 
" When I told her this she began to whine. 
And vowed she knew full well before. 
We wanted to drive them from the door !" 

" Well then, let's endure it as long as we can, 

For mortal life is but a span — 

Sylvia may marry — the old woman die — 

(I'm sure if they did I shouldn't cry) — 

And then we might live in comfort and ease. 

With our children around us in quiet and peace ; 

Were we rich we might furnish ourselves a room, 



LOVE IN A COTTAGE. 149 

Secure from a witch that could ride a broom, 

And these step-dames' tongues defy ! 
But henceforth let none but a fool in his dotage, 
Dream of comfort and peace with * Love in a Cottage!' " 



THE DUAL SPIRIT. 

Men lived in tents, and tended roaming herds, 
Ere, sprung alike from earth and heaven arose 

Twin brother spirits, that with majestic words 
Beckoned a palace from the quarries close, 

And, fashioned out of common clay, they chose 
A puny mortal, and nicknamed him king. 

A waste of splendor round him Jhey dispose ; 
And other mortals came to worshippmg 
That mortal for his show and giitteruig. 

And yet through human hands alone they wrought, 
To dig out treasures from the darkling mine ; 

To sculpture monuments of pride and thought, 
Or frame the lyre, or pour the song divine ; 

Or do great deeds the numbing hand of time 

Would pass untouched when thrones had crumbled low; 

And mingled with oblivion's wasting slime, 
They loved alike to raise or overthrow. 
To toil 'mid torrid sands or everlasting snow. 

And they were loved and hated, praised and jeered ; 

Oft victims both of flattery and scorn ; 
Dreaded and courted, idolized and feared, 

They dared the wrath of foe, and time, and storm. 
Men blest and cursed the hour when they Avere born, 

And yet earth blossomed and the low wind sighed ; 
They thawed no snow and chilled no sunshine w^arm, 



THE DUAL SPIRIT. 151 

And yet have men arisen, lived and died, 
And scarcely knew when with the twain that there 
was aught beside. 

Ambition ! Genius ! How your names can flash 

Electric fire across the sluggish soul ; 
As in the stagnant air loud thunders crash. 

And shake the welkm with their sudden roll. 
So oft they burst thro' custom's strong control, 

And shake the spirit with their lofty tone ; 
And ft-om equator to each distant pole 

Earth yields them tribute ft'om each circling zone, 

And man has bowed, a wiUing slave before their glow- 
ing throne. 

But once when men had caught then- burning flame, 
And taught its light on loathsome scenes to glow, 

Burned hamlet, city, palace, hut, and fane, 
And their mad shouts rose up as if to show 

How men could joy in utter human woe. 

When priests had thrown their sacred garb around 

Each hideous sin mankind can ever know, 

When sweet humanity's soft voice was drowned 
In the great war of warring hosts, and discord's 
jarring sound. 

Then Truth in sorrow veiled her radiant head. 
And Falsehood reigned above a darkened world ; 

When pitying Mercy wept unnumbered dead. 
From out fierce tyrants' bloody pathway hurled ; 

When up from human fuel slowly curled 
The blackening smoke of persecution's rage. 

The twain in sadness then their pinions furled. 



152 LICHEN TUTTS. 

For Hist'ry 'd written on her bloody page, 
" Ambition lit War's wasting torch, and led his pilgrim- 
age." 

And men arraigned him at their judgment bar ; 

The great blind multitude, who only knew 
That 'mid the clamor of each feudal jar, 

Or war of nations, or of robber crew. 
Ambition's torch o'er all its red light threw, 

And loud, 'mid clarion's, and 'mid trumpet's bray. 
His voice of thunder rolled and echoed through ; 

They knew not that the light was stolen away 

From hallowed altars, and profaned amid the fray. 

They knew not that that pealing tone 

Was sounding ever on thro' space and time ; 
But unto glowing, high-wrought souls alone. 

Pealed forth its anthems or its triumph chime. 
But those who caught it often linked with crime 

The words of power that they caught from Heaven ; 
They charged to Him, the generous and sublime. 

The evil that man's crime alone had given. 

They banished him, and forth that glowing soul was 
driven. 

His brother stood unnoticed in the throng, 

His dark eye dimmed with sorrow's scowling cloud 

He loved the right, but felt the power of wrong, 
Saw it, and heard it, 'mid the surgings loud 

Of that great monster, the wrong-headed crowd ; 
Yet not by anger, nor by pride, nor fear. 

Was Genius' spirit for a moment bowed ; 



THE DUAL SPIEIT. 153 

Half-wept he one disdainful, pitying tear, 
Then with his brother took his flight half round the 
sphere. 

A darkness settled on the blind old world, 

A mist of apathy and stagnant gloom 
From dull, inactive slothfulness, upcurled. 

And mould and mildew grew on glory's tomb. 
And science' buds were blighted ere their bloom, 

And art was banished 'mid forgotten things, 
To mourn the glory of her by-gone noon ; 

And music snapt her sweet vibrating strings. 

And poesy 'mid deepest shade furled up her shining 



But fast and far across the waters blue — 
The rolling billows of the ocean's surge — 

The twain in silence yet unwearied flew, 

'Till they had touched its forest-tasselled verge. 

No more their flight so constantly they urge, 

But paused, and glancing where they late passed 
o'er. 

Saw from the flood a pall-like mist emerge, 

And float off* darkly towards that distant shore 
Whence they had come. They sighed, and turned to 
flight once more. 

Fate drove the exile far across the land. 

Deep to the bosom of a giant rock. 
And chained him down with stern despotic hand, 

Where Iiis cold dungeon evermore would mock 
7 



154 



LICHEN TUFTS. 



His restless spirit, while the tempest's shock 
And zephyr's murmur far above his cell 

Made not a soimd to pierce the solid block, 

Where strong Ambition had been doomed to dwell, 
Where Genius followed him, self-exiled when he fell. 

And they were left alone, and darkness stood 

StiiF, palpable, and visible around. 
Above— beneath — while all her monster brood 

Of hideous fancies throng the gloom profound. 
How fared he then— that exile doomed and bound? 

The proud, aspiring, progress-spirit then ? 
Hope could not breathe one single cheering sound, 

And chill Despair came o'er his life again, 

Though oft repulsed in scorn — like all his faith in 
men. 

Ne'er on his path had Hope refused to smile ; 

ISTe'er had he faltered or despaired before ; 
Thwarted and crushed, had lain in dust awhile ; 

Then like a whirlwin(i on a tropic shore, 
Burst he to life and energy once more. 

In Hfe's rough discij)line, in school or field, 
One word he ne'er had conned or pondered o'er ; 

Against one lesson had his heart been steeled. 

He could not, would not learn the bitter words — to 
yield. 

But now an hour of dull and death-like dread 

Came o'er his soul — a with'ring agony, 
Such as men feel who have no tears to shed, 

When they have drunk such drops of misery 



THE DUAL SPIRIT. 155 

As few can live to bear — he breathed no sigh ; 

He spoke no word ; not e'en a thought broke thro' 
That stunning dread. He knew he could not die, 

And jet no hope for future years he drew. 

He had been conquered — this was all he felt or 
knew. 

A voice whose silvery sweetness softly fell, 

Like the low ripples on a shell-strewn shore. 
Or dying echo of a distant bell, 

Broke through his trance — his gush of passion o'er, 
He started up — a spell those accents bore 

To fright despair. " Look up !" those words were all 
That made Ambition like himself once more — 

He stood within a lofty lighted hall, 

While round him rose a thousand pillars white and tall. 

Bewildered — glad, and awed almost to fear, 
He stood one moment ; bursting then aloft. 

Rose his wild shout that echo loved to hear. 
Catching it up and uttering full oft, 

The joy cry loud, till whispering low and soft 
The murmurs far in distant music die, 

" I am not conquered ! tho' exiled and scoffed 
By man's decree and blind old destiny, 
'Twas but a moment that I stooped enough to sigh." 

He paused till echo rolled and died away. 
Like an imprisoned thunder sunk to sleep, 

And stillness followed its tumultuous play. 
Heavy — profound — like death's abysmal deep, 



156 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Whose gates the voiceless shades for ever keep ; 

Awe fell upon his spirit and he spoke, 
Subdued and soft as summer zephyr's sweep — 

" Was that thy voice, my brother ?" yet it broke 
The spell of silence, and a thousand whispers woke. 

"My brother!" "brother!" "thine my brother!" 
"thine!" 

Mingled in murmurs, wildering to hear, 
Confused and strange as sounds the morning chime 

Of wild birds warbling their heart-stirring cheer 
A flood of clashing music full and clear, 

Upon the wondering and repeating air, 
Till the vibrations half beguile the ear, 

To think no music so surpassing rare, 

As those wild echo-glees that woodsmen only share. 

But mingling with those waves of echo came, 
A voice he knew could not be all his own, 

Familiar accents spoke the exile's name, 

With deep afi*ection in its low-breathed tone : 

He knew — he felt — he was not all alone — 
The proud exultings of his heart grew still, 

A half-shed tear within his eyelids shone — 
A world was powerless to break his will. 
And yet one word could thus his stubborn spirit 
thrill. 

" Now who is thwarted. Destiny or thee ? 

Where is thy cell, of earth thy destined part? 
Can bungling man inspired by golden fee. 

Carve such a palace from the mountain's heart ? 



THE DUAL SPIRIT. 157 

Can their ideals thus to being start ? 

Their glowing thoughts congeal to solid stone, 

Without the tardy aid of feeble art ? 

A city might He dwarfed beneath this dome, 
That by my w^ill I built for love of thee alone ! 

" O brother ! with a heart of earnest love, 

And strong free faith in truth's unfailing power, 

"With will unflinching as the stars above, 

One well may balk earth's most exultant hour. 

Of half its triumph. What tho' Fate may lower. 
And men obedient echo back her ban ? 

The wrath of mortals, like a summer shower, 
Falls and is past ; and hate's most bitter plan, 
Dies wath the failing life of poor, short-sighted man. 

" Thou art a strong, and I a wayward one. 

Without thee, oft I ramble bootless w^here 
Thy eagle eye and spirit-stirring tone. 

Would rouse up hosts thy energy to share ; \ 

Thou from the desert, and the mountains bare. 

Would force out action by incessant toil. 
While I, too oft in valleys rich and fair, 

Riot mid nature's most luxuriant spoil. 
And leave un wrought the strength of that unbroken soil. 

" But when with thee, for me the deserts bloom, 

I make a palace of a dungeon cell. 
Despair's dark night with Hope's wild fires illume, 

And change doom's mutterings to the wavy swell 
Of music witching as a fairy spell ; 

With me thy footsteps blaze with glowmg light, 
And like the chime of a cathedral bell. 



158 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Thy voice, o'er ocean surge and mountain height, 
Peals forth in thunder tones thy words of might. 

"Henceforth let us be one, a Dual One, 

That, whom thou lovest, him I too shall love — 

We'll reap together what we both have strewm, 
And strew together wheresoe'er we rove ; 

But should I tarry in some myrtle grove, 

While far beyond thy j^rouder footsteps stray. 

Then, w-hom I bless thy spirit shall not move. 
But he shall be like those red lights that play 
O'er northern nights — as aimless and as vague as 
they. 

" Bird-like he'll tune his nature-prompted song, 
Nor seek to leave his native tangled shade, 

No motive power shall urge his course along. 
By impulse started and by impulse stayed. 

Prompted by feelings that he never w^eighed, 
One hour he'll sigh o'er some imagined ill. 

And joys, like Autumn leaves, will dim and fade, 
And then as sudden, wdth a joyous thrill. 
Pleasure shall crown life's cup that all the graces 
fill. 

*' Unknown to me some mortal shouldst thou name, 
That soul shall feel Ambition's force alone — 

Will toil from land to land — from main to main. 
To carve his name on rocks of every zone ; 

Each desert rock to him shall seem a throne. 
Seen thro' hope's mirage, ever drawing near, 

His barren path shall ne'er be overgrown. 



THE DUAL SPIRIT. 159 

With bloom I strew as I have strewn it here ! 

He shall be hard and cold and held in awe and fear. 

" But he to whom we both our blessings give, 
Shall mow the forests hke the blooming grass, 

Or plough the mountains or subdue the wave, 
Or far aloft the wilds of aether pass, 

Or touch the pulses of the human mass. 

And count its heart throes and find out the word 

That' rules hke magic o'er the populace vast — 
The word of power stronger than the sword, 
And where he listethhe shall rule the people as their 
lord I" 

How the Dark Ages slowly rolled away. 

And Destiny recalled the exiled pair. 
How new life struggled with the old decay. 

And new hope wrestled with the old despair, 
Is it not writ in Hist'ry's pages fair ? 

And they who led the exodus from night. 
Who brought up buried truths to upper air. 

For blindfold science, who found out the light, 

Were they not gifted of the twam — the Strong soul 
and the Bright ? 



A WORD TO THE WEARY. 

The eyes of men are failing with looking up so long, 

For fleetness to outrace the swift, and strength to fight 
the strong ; 

And their faith is full of doubting, when God's lightnings 
seem in vain, 

'J^o melt the ice from human hearts, or rive the bond- 
man's chain. 

And the lip hath learned to murmur at the law ill 
understood. 

Which sends the smi and rain alike on the evil and the 
good; 

And the heart grows sick and weary that the seed so 
freely sown. 

So often falls on barren sand, and cold unyielding stone ; 

That words return so dull and void, that went forth 
strong and full 

Of truth's most earnest prophecies against oppression's 
rule, 

And when he, like the seer of old, would call down scath 
and fire, 

Heaven's blue serene but seems to mock his soul's impa- 
tient ire. 

He sees a nation's garments grown, by threat and lash- 
paid toil ; 

He hears a murdered brother's blood cry ceaseless from 
the soil ; 



A WORD TO THE WEARY. 161 

He sees no forest deep enough in all our wide-spread 

land, 
To shield the crimeless fugitive from the oppressor's 

hand. 
A stranger rests within thy gates— a weary one is he— 
What boots his name, or hue, or race ? What matters 

it to thee ? 
Ahungered, cold, athirst, he comes— thy bounty gushes 

free ; 
A Saviour's tones approving say, " Thou doest it to me." 
But hark ! is that a bloodhound's bay ? Why comes its 

howling here ? 
Why turns the stranger's tranquil brow aghast with 

sudden fear? 
O! woe for him, that hunted one! thou canst not 

give him rest ; 
Thy household altar cannot shield that "welcomed 

stranger guest ;" 
The Marshal and his minions full armed are on his track, 
To his loathsome house of bondage to bear God's image 

back. 
No homestead walls, no fireside hearths, are sacred from 

the hands 
Of human vampyres such as these, who scourge our 

slave-curst land. 

What wonder that men's souls grow sick at all this woe 

and wrong ? 
What wonder that their faith is weak, when Evil seems 

so strong? 
She boasts her strength with voice of pride, and down 

before her fall 



162 LICHEN TUFTS. 

The leaders they had watched and hoped would break 

her h'on thrall. 
Then trust not to such wandering stars, to each a soul 

is given ; 
Each has his own peculiar work to do for earth and 

heaven. 
We read a fallen leader drew a third of Heaven's bright 

host 
Down to that grim and black abyss, where all were 

merged and lost. 
Then follow not blind, erring guides, when God can 

lead us all ; 
We owe allegiance to none else, we need no other's 

call. 
The arm of flesh is faint and weak, and if the spirit fail, 
O ! when in all this outraged world will truth and peace 

prevail ? 
When the half-wrecked ship is drifting upon the stormy 

sea. 
The sailor has no time to pause and wail despairingly. 
Storm-worn and dripping with the brine of many a bil- 
low's crest, 
The weary battler with the waves can find no time to 

rest. 
And now this whelming tide of wrong the bark of truth 

has tossed, 
Till hope's dim beacon, 'mid its wrath, seems well-nigh 

drowned and lost ; 
Yet all the more with earnest grasp hold fast the driving 

wheel, 
And steer amid the breaking surf our good ship's stub- 
born keel. 



A WORD TO THE WEARY. ibd 

The weary must not heed then' toil, nor weak ones 

count their fears ; 
The mourner must forget his grief— there is no time for 

tears ; 
The night watch must not miss our work, or when this 

driving storm 
Shall break before the blazing wheels that bring the 

coming morn. 
We shall not see the riven clouds fall dead and prone 

apart. 
And from their very blackest midst the genial sunlight 

start. 
Take courage, weary toiler ! Heaven whispers earnest 

cheer ; 
For ever when we least expect, the light and help draw 

near, 
For we know that God is with us — that for the man he 

gave. 
He will not take from master's hands a chattel soul — a 

slave. 
Ah, spoilers ! tremble when he calls, for that manhood 

robbed away ; 
For the host of rights and duties you are snatching from 

your prey ; 
Oh ! soldiers, on truth's battle-field, with your arms of 

love and light ! 
I charge ye, faint not — Gop has pledged the victory to 

the rio^ht. 



■BY THE MISSISSIPPI. 

Like to a lake the stream before me lieth, 
Between a rocky and a wooded shore, 

Cradling the many tints where daylight dieth, 
Repeating each expiring glory o'er. 

And there the forest shadows shake and shimmer, 
In every ripple by the breezes curled, 

All shapes are mingling in one common glimmer, 
Within that mirror's strange inverted world. 

A white sail, like a sea-bird o'er it glideth. 
And floats behind the island's twilight grey 

Where creeps a pale mist slowly up and hideth 
Whatever lieth in its milky way. 

The blue Itasca would not know her daughter, 
So soiled with travel and so overgrown, 

Who spreads yon rolling sea of turbid water, 
A thousand leagues out toward the burning zone. 

From out the caverned bluff the night bird calleth, 
And from the quarry comes an answering cry, 

The flitting double of the night hawk falleth 
Down where the other shivering shadows lie. 

And one white star on night's cool forehead glistens, 
And glistens upward from the waves as well. 



BY THE MISSISSIPPI. 165 

And with hushed breath my very spirit listens 
To some sweet music's far-off, dying swell. 

I almost wish that I could do my sleeping 
With yonder wild birds on the river's breast, 

And with the stars their ceaseless vigil keeping. 
Be like an infant once more rocked to rest. 



SACRAMENT. 

Up by the old road on the hill, 

Now with the creeping grass o'ergrown, 
Near where the faintly springing rill 

Is oozing o'er the mossy stone — 
Hard by the grouse's deep retreat, 

Through all this soft autumnal haze, 
Wait for me at the old time seat, 

Dear Love of by-gone days ! 

The world is flushed with ceaseless change, 

Its brimming joy cup running o'er. 
But weary of the new and strange, 

I long for our old haunts once more. 
I long to tread each dear old hill, 

Beneath its woods of red and gold. 
And 'mid their riches grand and still, 

Be soul-baptized within the Old. 

Cease shivering, trembling Aspen tree — 

I would not have thy rustling heard ! 
Murmur not now, thou Pine wood sea ! 

Sigh not, soft Wind ! chant not, sweet Bird ! 
Lay thy dear hand in mine, my Own, 

That I may feel thy heart thrVDbs near, 
And take from God, with me alone, 

This Sacrament of Silence here. 



MAKE NOT POYERTY'S CUP TOO BITTER. 

Ye may harness the lightning till trained like a steed, 
It will carry your thoughts with its limitless speed, 
Ye may yoke the fierce whirlwind till bowed to your 

will. 
It will grind like the ox you have broke to your mill ; 
Ye may tame the wild cataract's flood till it feels, 
Like a felon condemned at your factory wheels ; 
But there stay your strong hand, nor dare lengthen 

your chain. 
E'er to harness a soul to your engines for gain. 

Ye may desecrate Nature, and haughtily tread 
On the wrecks of its beauty, disfigured and dead, 
But 'twere better for you that ne'er from the sod 
Ye had started to life, at the mandate of God, 
If ye dare to subdue to your power the will 
Of a soul, which, tho' crushed and distorted, is still 
In the image of Him, who hath, equal and free. 
Made that spirit, proud atoms of frailty, with ye ! 

We can toil for a purpose, and cling unto life. 

Thro' its storms and its turmoil, temptations and strife, 

While the purpose is high, and the motive is pure. 

Few indeed are the trials we cannot endure. 

But go — put your curb on another's free will. 

Keep us back from our aim, yoke our souls in your mill, 

Make our poverty something too bitter to bear, 

Ye will see then how much a high purpose will dare. 



168 LICHEN TUTTS. 

We can sleep upon straw on the cold garret floor, 
"We can toil on the crusts Dives casts from the door, 
We can shiver half clad by the unlighted hearth, 
Tho' we quail at the sound of the northern wind's mirth. 
We can bear it and smile if the heart food is there, 
To urge on the free spirit to do and to dare ; 
Aye ! can laugh at privation, and hunger, and cold. 
And thro' scorn, tho' in rags, be strong-'hearted and bold, 
For we know that the wealth of Peru cannot buy 
Our ambition's proud hope — or a home in the sky ; 
And each slight that we feel, and each sneer that we 

meet, 
Adds fresh fire to our hearts, and gives wings to our feet ; 
Every force that opposed, when o'ercome makes us 

strong. 
Gives us courage to battle with famine and wrong. 
But dare bar up the path to our purpose, and see 
If the poor in their might are not stronger than ye ! 



TO-DAY. 

A GOLDEN cloud with silvery traces, 

The future^ floated on before, 
Its border smiled with angel faces, 

A double rainbow spanned it o'er. 

The sunlight thro' its winged edges. 

Shed a dreamy, mystic calm, 
As o'er the mountain's serried ridges, 

TJnscarred by peak or crag it swam. 

O'er my childhood trailed its shadow. 

As unchildlike sad, I lay. 
Beneath the old tree in the meadow. 

Listening to the water's play. 

And time's wooing winds were winning, 

All my long days thitherward, 
Unthought-of stretched life's path of sinning, 

Pain-enhedged and fire-scarred — 

The future gathered dark before me, 

One grim cloud, streaked with sulph'rous dun ; 

It came to meet, it shadowed o'er me. 
And life's battle seemed begun ! 

" O my dreaming !'' cried my spirit, 
" Is human life a storm like this ? 

Must I from childhood's gloom inherit, 
Maturer grief for hoped-for bhss ?" 



170 LICHEN TUFTS. 

" ! thou golden-clouded future ! 
Angel-Avinged and rainbow-spanned ! 

Didst thou herald woe and torture, 
A mocking mirage 'mid life's sand ?" 

But that scathing future came not, 

Wliere fell its shadow, fierce and dread, 

And my youth but shared the same lot. 
That my weary childhood had. 

And my spirit felt such yearning, 

For a wider path to tread. 
Its long task of patience learning. 

While it knew not where it led. 

And then the future, like a morning 

Blank with fog, before me lay, 
'Till my searching soul took warning, 

And turned its scanning to to-day. 

Lo ! my cramped path expanded ! 

Roses flushed its hedge of thorns ! 
The free air my soul demanded, 

Blew fresh with breath of summer morns. 

Then my soul looked round in wonder ; 

" Whence," it cried, " this brightened way ? 
Was this the promise of the thunder 

And the clouds of yesterday ?" 

" Have my cheerless footsteps led me, 

Footsore up the mount of toil. 
Where no friendly aiding sped me. 

To tread, at last, enchanted soil ?'' 



TO-DAY. 171 

The cloudlet of my childhood's vision, 

Around me spreads its hazy gold, 
While onward, seeking realms elysian, 

The angel hosts their wings unfold. 

How their great white pinions beckon. 

As on o'er gulf and crag they go ! 
Bridging chasms, thunder-stricken. 

With my child-dream's promise bow. 

Then farewell, Hope ! and farewell, fearing ! 

Farewell, sighs for yesterday ! 
Since angel guards of faith and cheering 

Make life rich enough to-day ! . 



SUMMER FRIENDSHIP. 

" I LOVE thee !'' the Apostle said, 
Yet, ere another sun had shed 
Its flood of light on tower and fane, 
That friend denied the loved one's name. 
And one more false and treacherous sold. 
That priceless life for counted gold ; 
Yet, who more loving seemed to be. 
Ere that dark hour of wrath, than he ? 

And yet the one they crucified — 
The one his loving friend denied — 
Was kind and gentle and more true 
Than other friend earth ever knew, 
Yet he found friends whose love grew cold. 
Friends who denied him — friends who sold- 
Friends who were never friends indeed. 
And left him in his utmost need. 

If false ones smote that gentle one. 
So kind to all and harsh to none, 
What erring child of earth may claim 
A friendship deeper than a name ? 
Tho' all may seem to love thee well, 
Who, for the coming hour, can tell 
Which of the friends who love in this 
Will not betray him with a kiss ? 
Who, ere life's changing sands are run, 
'Mid all his friends is sure of one ? 
Who, ere life's journey hath an end. 
Will dare to say, " I have a friend ?" 



BY THE SEA-SIDE. 

I FELT the beating pulses of the cool and trembling sea, 
Thrill 'neath the silent touching of my earnest hand, 

And the long bright ripples ran in meeting me, 
And leaped in laughter on the shell-strewn sand. 

And my soul gushed up and over, as at clasp of friendly 
hand. 

The sea-weeds rooted close, and clinging to some old 

and wave-worn shell, 
Cast their green and dripping tresses underneath my 

careless feet. 
And the fairy foam-wreaths mounting every long and 

wavy swell, 
Tossed their white plumes on the air, and rushing 

glad and fleet 
Dissolved in rainbows on the waves that murmured at 

my feet. 

And the old and mythic dreamings of strange mystery 
and might 
That whispered their enchanting spells to my early 
childhood's ear. 
Came flashing o'er my spirit's gloom, like broken gleams 
of light. 
Leaping from cloud-thrones drifting wide in the far 
off upper deep. 
And then as sudden fading back to darkness and to sleep. 



174 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Then the soul within me, harness worked and labor 

tried, 
Arose and shook its shackles from each bondage 

wearied limb, 
New strength seemed waking in me, new fervor and 

new pride, 
The new glory dawning on me made all earth-born 

glory dim, 
And life transfigured stood before me, true of heart and 

free of limb ! 

Then life's battle seemed a conflict, not of pain, and toil, 

and woe, 
^ But more a war of wind and wave, of tempest and of 

sea! 
And a stormy love of combat, in my veins began to glow, 
And heave my heart in great pulsations, in the joy of 
being free ! 
O ! my soul grew brave and stronger from the teach- 
ings of the sea ! 



I'LL TELL YOU, COZl 

YoTJ ask me if I ever loved, and I most freely tell, 

I have loved long and faithfully, loved earnestly and 

well, 
Loved all things good and beautiful with love like wor- 
ship given. 
Because I could not lock within the richest boon of 

Heaven : 
Bind up the wind in some dark cave, and chain the 

restless sea. 
Then prison in the human heart its springs of sympathy ! 
How can you ask of one like me, who on the earth so 

long 
Has journeyed on life's pilgrimage, with all its changing 

throng ? 
O ! I have loved, an(^|^ere are none in this dark world 

of care. 
Who in my heart's great sympathies have never held a 

share. 
I've loved the tender and the cold, the worthless and 

the true, 
"Within my heart a bud of love for each thing human 

grew, 
All things that breathe upon the earth, and e'en the 

very air. 
The guiltless and the beautiful I have loved everywhere, 
And yet in all this realm of love my heart has been a 

throne, 



116 LICHEN TUFTS. 

And he that sat thereon has ruled my spirit-land alone, 
And obedient to my heart's enthroned, as to a god's 

behest, 
I've loved the world, the whole wide world, but my 

own will the best. 



PITY. 

How much is pride, that humble seems ! 

How much is false, truth's guise that wears, 
How patronizing kindness leans 

Its crushing weight on him who bears 
The hateful mockery, as the saint 
Bears fire and stake, without complaint. 

»Tis hard in gratitude to bow 

And teach the stubborn lip to lie. 

When the heart's writhing pride must glow, 
Insulted, in the cheek and eye, 

Yet utter thanks^ when it has borne 

Man's stupid pity — worse than scorn ! 

It's not enough the struggling soul. 

Debarred from paths it fain would tread. 

Must bow to fortune's stern control. 
And barter life for bitter bread — 

Bitter with scorn's cold wormwood dew. 

But must it bear man's pity too ? 



TWAIN 

How strangely things are mixed and blended, 

Within the chaos of the brain ! 
Things unbegun with things long ended — 

Some of joy and some of pain. 

« 
Things as unlike as things well may be, 

Together through the soul's obscure, 
Half float and sway in drifts unsteady, 

Like snow-wreaths on a wind-swept moor. 

Just now a friend I made but newly, 
An old man, meek and quiet, came 

Across my thoughts, which, all unruly, 
Have called him by another's name. 

And oft of late this name he beareth. 
Within my spirit's unknown land, 

Though ever his own form he weareth : 
What link between them made this band ? 

My first friend's eye was like the eagle. 

His frame with youth's strong sinews strung, 

His voice, like call of silvery bugle. 
Around its strong-willed message flung. 

A fireside look, and voice, and tread, 
My new friend hath, so sweetly human, 

I turn and look at his snowy beard. 
And wonder he is not a woman ! 



TWAIN. 179 

Why should that name come thus, unbidden, 

To call on one so different far ? 
Unlike as caves from sunshine hidden. 

And golden-blossomed prairies are. 

They never met nor uttered greeting. 

Never heard each other's name — 
Why in my thoughts do they keep meeting, 

As though they somehow were the same ? 



VOICES. 

Like the ripple of bright wavelets, 
On a beach of soft sea-sand ; 

Like the flutter of the leaflets, 
Li a wide-spread forest land ; 

Like the footsteps of the rain-drops, 
In their dance upon the roof; 

Or the ringing elfin echo, 
Of a fairy charger's hoof; 

Like the hushed hive's low humming, 
When night's solemn rest has come, 

Are the whisperings of our spirits, 
When we seek to be alone. 

We listen to their murmur, 
Till their pleasant rustling seems, 

As full-voiced, deep, and real, 
As the songs we hear in dreams. 

The unreal' s changing shadows 
With the real's substance blend. 

Till forgotten lies life's riddle. 
And its fast-approaching end. 

For the mists of death's dark valley, 
Rainbow arches bright o'erspan. 

And beyond, in boundless sunshine. 
We behold the path of man ! 



VOICES. 181 

Then what matter for the darkness, 

Closed within our prison bars, 
When w^e know, that past its portals. 

All broad space is bright with stars ! 

When we know a whole world's shadow 

On the wilds of aether cast, 
Down before heaven's watch-light dwindles 

To viewless point at last ! 

And at last when life emerges. 

With the faint breath from our lips, 

And its glimmering light is hidden 
By grim death's cold, dread eclipse — 

Shall that darkness break the fiat, 

By the universe obeyed. 
And thus be, 'mid life, the only 

Eternity of shade ? 

" Nay !" these thousand voices answer, 

From the earth and upper air ; 
From the inmost restless spirit. 

Outspeaking everywhere. 

Death is but the gateway, closing 

'Tween the old life and the new ; 
Have ye never seen it open, 

When a passing soul went through ? 

Though sometimes the darkness lieth 

Dim beyond the outer wall, 
And no star-beam's brightness pierceth 

Through that heavy midnight pall — 



182 LICHEN TUFTS. 

And we sigh for the soul unlighted, 
Going down that lonely way ; 

For our eyes are unanointed, 
To behold the future day ; 

Yet sometimes the sunlight streameth, 
Over all that solemn road, 

'Till its glory casts a halo 
On the soul's cast-off abode. 

And, oh ! then these spirit whispers 
That have borrowed earthly tones, 

Swell to such floods of music. 
As high heaven only owns ! 



BEAUTIFUL LIFK 

SwAYixG and swimming thi'oiigh sunset air, 
Insect wings shivering everywhere, 
Shake out a song from these quivering wings. 
Which a dreamy sense of their blessedness brings ; 
How they joy in a being scarce measured by hours. 
Since they die when the dewdrops come down on the 
flowers. 

Beautiful life ! 

Down in the quiet pools sheltered and deep. 
In their silvery mail do the fishes sleep ; 
Or up through the ripples they flash in the light, 
Like a meteor's flame in a cloudless night ; 
Soulless, and sinless, and fearless are they. 
While they revel in life as it passes away. 
Beautiful life ! 

Cloudward and skyward upspringing, the birds 
Pour over earth their musical words ; 
They rain down their music from out of the sky, 
And from every thicket and brookside sigh ; 
As free as the songs of the waves of the sea. 
Out pour their carols of rapturous glee ! 
Beautiful life ! 

Out from each shadowy cavernous glen. 
Out from each meadow and marsh and fen, 



184 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Out from the prairie and down from the hill, 
Come cries of the life blest, low toned and shrill ; 
From everything living, and everywhere. 
Gushes life's joyfulness filling the air ! 
Beautiful life ! 

And human life silvered with morning light. 
Golden with noon, or flushing toward night ; 
Grand with its conflicts of tempest and storm. 
In its every hour and every form ; 
Mellowed and deep in its growing old, 
How can its riches be fully told ? 
Beautiful life ! 



PHANTOM BUILDING. 

A FOOTSTEP in the dust we trace, 

And then, of him whose step was there, 

We build above that loAvly place, 
A phantom figure in the air. 

Lone Crusoe saw a shadow host. 
Hold savage orgies on the strand, 

Because upon that barren coast, 
A human footstep pressed the sand. 

The Arab bites his wordless lip, 

To see an armed train pass by, 
When nought of barb or " desert ship," 

Save footprints, meets his searching eye. 

We see a dead stalk on a wall. 
And suddenly to golden bloom. 

There bursts through all its death-spell's thrall, 
The wallflower's phantom o'er its tomb, 

A snowless winter's walk we take. 

Through some deserted graveyard old. 

Where 'neath our feet the scentless brake, 
And grass, lie withered, brown and cold. 

Their rustling crush recals their past. 
Like magic life-word to them spoke, 
8* 



186 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Their brown arms up toward Heaven they cast, 
Their wintry doom of thraldom broke. 

Up from the dull and frozen mould, 
Transfigured springs the fragrant fern. 

And verdant grass, and daisies bold, 
Smile round each solemn gravestone's urn. 

We pass — some trailing brambles clasp 
Fast to our skirts with hooked thorn ; 

We stoop to loose this tightening grasp 
Of stems, of life and verdure shorn. 

We cast the rough encumbrance down. 
When full-leaved up before us rise, 

With berries bowed these briers brown, 
Grown green and strong before our eyes ! 

Can summer skies melt bonds of death. 
With surer skill than this we share ? 

Dare magic words, in whispered breath, 
Evoke more phantoms than we dare ? 

What matter for the driving storms. 
The drifting snows, life's wintrier parts. 

When in us live all glowing forms. 
Creative summer in our hearts ? 



« LIBERTY— EQUALITY— BROTHERHOOD." 

When morning broke bright o'er the darkness that 

shrouded 
The sleep-shackled world in a mantle of night, 
When the wild wind had chased the dun vapor that 

clouded 
The blue deep of aether obscuring its light, 
When no prison confined, and no walls were around 

thee, 
Hast thou never then felt that thou wast not yet free, 
That the bondage of custom so closely had bound thee, 
That other men's thoughts are a prison to thee ? 

Hast thou never grown sick in thy spirit with fearing 
The laugh of some worm crept up higher than thou ? 
Or some pitiful fool, who had borrowed his sneerhig. 
To whose broadcloth and gold all the multitude bow ? 
Yet thou dared not turn back, and with pride answer 

pride, 
And with scorn spurn the scorn that fell heavy on thee ? 
Thy locks have been shorn, and thy hands have been 

tied. 
False customs have bound thee ! thou canst not be free ! 

Burst forth from thy bondage, proud spirit, and utter 
Those truths that shall set other souls in a glow. 
Let the Ughtning-bolt strike ere the deep thunders mutter, 
Be free first thyself — then help all to be so ! 



188 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Is not thy soul human, and life everlasting 
A heritage free — ^by thy birthright thy own ? 
Who heirs an estate thine in grandeur surpassing, 
Or who has a less, that thou ever hast known ? 

The laborer crushed in the dust shall awaken 

From the sleep where he lost his dread portion of toil ; 

And the king shall leave earth when death's sceptre shall 

beckon. 
Then the slave shall be peer of the lord of the soil ! 
No more shall the lordling in luxury silken. 
Use the labor in which he has taken no part, 
No more shall grieved echo sob back from the welkin 
The sigh of the starved in mind, body, and heart. 

For the grave owns but equals in dust it is 'tombing, 
And souls find but equals beyond the dim shore. 
Whose dark shrouding shadows, forbidding, lie glooming 
Around death's deep waters we all must pass o'er. 
Must the soul then, forgetting its own mighty powers, 
Supine in the dust, put its birthright away. 
Till the grim King of Terrors shall roll round the hours 
To close up life's wintry and wearisome day ? 

Or shall it stretch forth its free wings, ere the dawning 
Of life in the realms of the beautiful sky. 
To meet the slow-coming, yet glorious morning. 
Whose steps are approaching, whose advent is nigh ? 
When hand clasped in hand shall acknowledge its brother, 
When peasant and prince shall be titles unknown. 
When none shall claim rights he denies to another. 
And all bow to one Monarch — one Father— one throne. 



THE PICTURE ON THE WALL. 

Theee's a soft dreamy landscape that hangs on the wall, 
Through the sweet Sabbath solitude whispering things, 
That a single light footstep in parlor or hall, 
^ Would drown with the echoes each footstep brings. 

Some artist unknown with his soul all aglow. 
With a light other eyes had no power to see. 

And a heart whose deep poetry could not o'erflow, 
For words were denied and his spirit not free ; 

Has here slowly evolved thro' his beautiful art, 
A shadowy scene from the dreamland within, 

Where clouds shade that glory that poured on his heart. 
And his toil has brought twilight to soften its beam. 

But thro' that soft light that glows dim on the lake. 
With its tinge on the foam and the archway grey. 

On that brown ancient tower and tufted brake, 

And those clouds' ragged masses far floatmg away, 

I can trace the pale glory of that spirit light. 
That but glowed for the soul of the poet alone, 

And thro' those still shadows, foreboding the night. 
Are his fetters of soul to my spirit made known. 

This glory and shadow so wedded in one, 
Give birth to a host of whispering dreams, 



190 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Who make silence their voice when they find us alone, 
To reveal the deep source of each life's hidden streams. 

The landscape is lovely and brings to our view, 
The castles and rocks of some far away place, 

But it shows us more faithfully, life-like, and true. 
The artist who painted those scenes which he traced. 



ONE APRIL EVE. 

I'VE been out in the " grand old woods '* to-day, 

Where the earlier plant stems the damp earth part, 
As their long chilled pulses begin to play, 

And their leaves toward the genial simlight start ; 
Spring's first birds chirped on each budding tree. 

And merrily swung on each wind-swept bough. 
And I never was younger, it seems to me, 

Or more of a child, than I am just now ! 

The frogs that were piping so shrUl in the flood. 

Told the stories so oft in my hearing erst told, 
And strangers were with me, the kind and the good. 

Who sang me the songs I had loved of old ; 
These spells have been breaking the chain-links of years, 

And sweeping me back to life's by-gone day, 
Till my soul has swelled with its old time fears, 

Its loves and its joys that have passed away. 

The fountains deep hid in my heart have gushed o'er. 

In tears of warm tenderness, spite of my will. 
And I long for some dear one, familiar of yore. 

To catch its outpourings — its throbbings to still. 
The kindness of strangers is touching and sweet. 

And gentle new friends for my gratitude call. 
But I'd give all the world, this bright eve, but to meet. 

Some old friend I love — 'twould be worth more than all ! 



BY A LAKE SIDE. 

Night's dusky plumes float slowly over, 

From the cold grey eastern sky, 
Toward where eve's bright pinions hover, 

Lingering ere the day shall die. 
And leave the chambers of the west. 

To this still, solemn, starlit guest. 

Flaming chariot wheels of glory. 

Such as bore the seer away, \ 

Blazed beyond the lake before me. 

As they carried off the day ; 
Then as the fading splendor fled, 

Night's dreamy spells were round me shed. 

Across the lake and land and river, 
Those witching spells my vision bear, 

Till with joy's quick, sudden shiver. 
Meet I one remembered there ; 

Yon blue horizon lost the key. 

That locked the absent one from me I 

O ! bless thee, Night ! for power given, 
To melt such weary leagues away. 

And keep, where'er life's bark be driven, 
Oblivion's ghostly shade at bay. 

Till those once near us seem so yet, 

And we forget we can forget ! 



THE DEATH WATCH. 

Night had spread o'er earth's surface, 

A damp and darksome pall, 
Ocean sent up its vapors. 

To overshadow all ; 
Silence had hushpd sound's voices. 

All save the night-bird's call ; 
The dull monotonous murmur, 

Of wind and waterfall, 
The cricket's chir]?, and death-watch ticking. 

Ticking in the hollow wall. 

On the couch sleep had deserted, 

Tossed the restless to and fro. 
Listened to the lonely night-wind, ' 

Wished for morning's rosy glow. 
Wearied of the wind's low murmur. 

And the stream's unceasing flow. 
Tried to marshal into order. 

Thoughts that from confusion grow ; 
Turned and sighed for gifts that mortals. 

On earth are destined not to know, 
Then hel(Jthe breath and stilled heart-beating. 

To hear the death-watch ticking slow ; 
Ticking in the wall at midnight. 

Monotonous and low, 
A keeping time to death's sure footsteps, 

'Mid summer's bloom and winter's snow. 



194 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Then slowly creeps a shivering shudder, 

Through each limb and nerve and bone, 
A thrill of half delicious terror, 

Exquisitely lone, 
That amid the day's broad beaming 

We would blush to own. 
But now with darkness round us brooding. 

Fear's dark power is known. 
Superstition grasps our heart-strings, 

And makes the mind its throne ; 
And we think of hoarse death rattles, 

And the dying groan. 
When we hear the death-watch ticking, 

Ticking in a gentle tone. 
In the hollow wall at midnight, 

When we are alone. 



OUR OWN OLD WOODS. 

Afar across the billows' sounding roar — 

The sky-like waters, and their star-like isles — 
Why seeks the trav'ler on Italia's shore, 

'Mid clang of war, or old Rome's treach'rous wiles, 
To find a land where genial nature smiles ? 

Why search 'mid reUcs of forgotten art, 
Where nature's tapestry drapes its ruined piles, 

For food to nourish in the mind and heart, 
The latent feelings and the thoughts that may to being 
start ? 

Do Greece's statues to her noble sons, . 

Who died in exile by decrees unjust, 
Teach him to love his own land's honored ones 

Who lie unsculptured, mould'ring back to dust ? 
Do gods of stone teach him a holier trust 

In him whom hands have never shadowed forth ? 
Or crumbling thrones or monarch's trampled bust. 

Instruct his heart how little strength is worth. 
More than the prostrate forest kings in lands that gave 
him birth ? 

Do nameless cities 'mid the desert lands — 
Once royal seats, but now the bats' abode — 

Tell that lone pilgrim wandering o'er the sands, 
One tale untaught by any woodland road. 

The schoolboy from his father's house once trod ? 
When solemn awe his youthful soul o'ercame, 



196 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Where the green light thro' matted branches showed 

The narrow path, — his pent breath scarcely came, 
Lest he should wake some monster wild, or shape with- 
out a name. 

As in his mantle 'neath the open sky, 

He counts the islets in the upper deep, 
Does not the jackal's ever wakeful cry, 

Or hoarse hyena, banishing his sleep. 
Remind him of those days, when 'mid his sheep. 

His father's dog kept hungry wolves at bay. 
When their long howls and many pattering feet 

Wore the dull hours of tedious night away, 
'Till o'er that lonely wilderness the morn rose pale and 
grey? 

The present danger melts and fades away, 

As mist wreaths vanish in the aether free ; 
For thro' the past his wakened mem'ries stray, 

His thoughts are busy far beyond the sea. 
Where no red sands have buried bud and tree, 

Ai^d plain, and city 'neath their scorching waves, 
Where mldbirds sing, where hums the honey bee ; 

And many a wildfowl its soft plumage laves. 
In glassy lake and river deep, hoarse rushing from its 
caves ; 

Or stream that gathers from each silvery rill. 

That winds through glen and narrow, dark ravine ; 

An added item its deep course to fill. 
While trackless wildwoods raise their trunks between, 



OUR OWN OLD WOODS. 197 

And bathe their feet amid the waters' sheen, 
And nod above the brink of each cascade, 

Each leaning unto each its forehead green. 
To watch the motion of the flickering shade. 

That their crossed arms, in airy dance, with the soft 
wind have made. 

He fancies how that cabin, bare and rude. 

Might spread a shelter o'er his sleeping head. 
Where beasts that prowl that houseless solitude, 

Awed by man's presence, would not dare to tread ; 
An Indian wigwam, or a hunter's shed. 

Were safe protection in that lonely place. 
Where nations once in mutual struggle bled. 

Dreaming of glory, yet have left no trace 
Of nation or of tribe — no name of chieftain or of race. 

Here all alone, from feud and faction free, 

" The world forgetting — ^by the world forgot" — 
The forest lord beneath some sheltering tree. 

Might search as deeply in the mines of thought 
As he whose brain 'mid foreign scenes had wrought, 

For gems of truth, where, 'mid his weary toil. 
The very wild beast's desert bowlings brought 

Back to his memory all the golden spoil 
Of mental wealth he'd left unreaped upon his native soil. 

By distance hallowed come the scenes of home — 
The rocky girdle of the ocean's surge — 

The mountain's peak, the rushing cataract's foam, 
The tempest's shriek, the low wind's wailing dirge ; 



198 LICHEN TUFTS. 

The arrowy prows, that swift as wild wings urge 
Their trackless way across the swelling floods, 

Caves that yawn o'er leagues of wonders huge, 
And over all the endless solitudes 

Of forests wide and dim — ^his own land's dark old woods 



SNOW SONG. 

Come, beautiful snow, and bury the world, 

It is foul with many a stain ; 
And I long for a little while to look, 

And behold it clean again ! 

Restlessly heaving to and fro. 

Earth's milHons turn and toil. 
And Uves are worn and traded away 

For a foothold on God's soil. 

For the body's bread and its clothes. 

Its dwelling and burial place. 
The soul is forgotten and thrown away, 

And leaves but dust in its place. 

Evil is cruel, and fierce, and strong, 

And stealing the name of law, 
Sends love to the gibbet and truth to jail, 

And the human to market hke straw. 

My soul rebels with a fierce revolt. 

But they bid it to bear the ill. 
For a woman's sense of right they say. 

Must wait on another's wiU. 

They bind the hands and gag free lips. 

And mock the exceeding pain ; 
Oh ! the earth is foul ! thanks, beautiful snow, 
For making it clean again I 



MARTHA. 

I LOVE thee, Martha, with a love that Hveth, 

With my deep passion for all lovely things, 
Yet with that sad misgiving that receiveth, 

From ceaseless changes its melancholy tinge. 
Love is our life — Earth's beauty — Heaven's brightness — 

The soul's responding to another's call ; 
The mountain's strength, the cloud-wing's fairy light- 
ness. 

The psalm of waves, of wind, and waterfall — 
Wake in our hearts that restless sweet emotion, 

That gusheth upward toward the bright and true, 
Even as rise the billowy tides of Ocean, 

When Dian beckons fromi the empyrean blue. 
But when a true heart, in its ceaseless beating, 

Throbs out warm comfort to those lingering near, 
Though in a crowd it give its passing greeting, 

The warmth it giveth makes that true one dear ! 



STAR-BEAMS IN SHADOW LAND. 

Day, crowned with sunbeams, sinks to rest. 

Pillowed 'mid clouds that blush and glow, 
Transfigured by their royal guest 

From dun to rosy gold and snow. 
The hand of evening comes to write, 

In shadowy letters on our wall. 
Weird promise that the mist-veiled night 

On day's broad realm awaits to fall. 

Yet ere that spell-enchanted light — 

That strange green light of summer eves. 
That comes before the fire-flies light 

Their lamps among the whispering leaves- 
Comes with its vague things half revealed, 

Like memories that we can't recall, 
That tempt pursuit, but only yield 

An echo's answer to our call — 
Let us put by each day-worn thought, 

And, in this Sabbath of the hours. 
Wait for the good so often sought, 

So seldom found 'mong " human flowers." 

That wisdom schoolmen have not learned. 
That deep-read sages oft deny — 

By churchmen laughed to scorn, or spurned, 
Or passed in heedless silence by, 

And yet which yearning spirits long, 
And hunger weary years to know, 
9 



202 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Tho' sung in every wood-thrush song, 

And breathed thro' May woods' fragrant snow ; 

And this green forest twilight tells 

In sybil tones thro' dark-grouped trees, 

One of the spirit's holiest spells, 
The key-note to its mysteries. 

The heart in crowds which vainly sought 

Its secret pass-word answered back — 
The one who learned what schoolmen taught 

To find, through his own soul, the track 
By which those weird impressions come, 

Unasked, to haunt his thoughtful hours, 
"With visions of that Eden home 

The gypsies tell us once was ours — 
Yet learned in vain ; for through the soul 

No chart hath marked the devious way, 
And, far as ever from the goal. 

He learned by turns to doubt and pray. 
The one who sought for spirit lore. 

Of churchmen learned in creed and law, 
Conning dry bones of dead faith o'er, 

Still doubting all its proofs he saw — 
These might have learned, in this hushed wood, 

Alone with God and Nature's scroll. 
In this still, solemn solitude. 

These untaught lessons of the soul. 

Seek, delve and search, for wealth of gold, 
For knowledge of God's outward plan. 

Toil for all learning, new and old. 
Make thought's rich spoil thine — if thou caii ; 



STAR BEAMS IN SHADOW LAND. 203 

But o'er the soul's entrenchments deep, 

No toil can bridge thy curious way ; 
To scale its ramparts, sheer and steep, 

In vain is art's or strength's essay ; 
For here, as by the Jordan's flood. 

Thy thought, like Israel's host, must stand: 
Still the wild chafing of thy blood — 

Relax thy grasping, toil-stained hand — 
Cool thy vexed spirit's feverish heat — 

Soothe down its each impulsive thrill — 
Rest here, unshod, thy way-worn feet, 

Obedient to the words, " Stand still !" 
Toil cannot win — gold cannot buy — 

Lore cannot give the soul its keys ; 
Itself sees not the seeing eye — 

Mind knows not mind's deep mysteries ; 
But like the glass reflecting back. 

The eye that seeks itself to see. 
This twilight shows us what we lack, 

And what we are, and are to be. 
And through the drifting mists that weave. 

Through warp of fact this woof of thought, 
The waiting spirit can receive 

The truths its teachers have not taught. 
And dimly as through distance far. 

Beholds its own deep secrets lie — 
Or shadowy types of what they are. 

That vanish as they come more nigh. 

And this is all — yet upward ever 

Those visions point us as they go. 
Mute promise that past death's deep river 

Our souls shall learn themselves to know. 



STAGNATIOiT. 

His spirit bears no weight of woe, 
ISTor is it saddened by one pang ; 

His heart beats no despairing throe, 
'No storm-clouds o'er his spirit hang, 

Nor dimming tear-drops fill his eyes, 

To tell of grief or sad sui^^rise. 

Yet pleasure hath but little part 

In the dull chaos of his brain, 
Mirth quickens not his sluggish heart, 

Which only knows it feels no pain — 
For joy hath lost the glad control 
With which it ruled his willing soul. 

His stagnant thoughts in silence creep, 
Nor seek new mysteries to explore, 

Unheeding as the rocks that sleep 
On grim oblivion's murky shore ; 

Nor, but from habit, would they turn. 

To where Heaven's watch-fires dimly burn. 

The dormouse in its winter cell. 
Its death-like lethargy may break 

In winter's wildest storm. 

As he from out this stupor wake, 

While wintry circumstances hold 

His spirit in theii* icy fold. 



STAGNATION. 205 

O, spring-time ! hast thou lost thy way, 

And lingered in the sunnier bowers 
Of hearts that catch each genial ray, 

To warm affection's springing flowers. 
That thou hast left life's freezing chill. 
Upon his wearied spirit still ? 



LULLABY. 

O, WHY that sad, murmuring, half-conscious strain, 

" Be hushed my dark spirit !" sung over again ? 

Are there storms with their shadows cast over thy sky, 

That thus thou should' st sing them their lullaby ? 

Do the vapors of cloud-land thy sjDirit enfold 

As the dun mists of autumn their volume have rolled 

Round the mountain that basked in the summer sun 

Ere the hours of darkness and gloom had come ? 

Or in that strain is there lingering still 

Tones that no more thy soul shall thrill — 

Echoes of voices that far through the past. 

The bewildering spell of their melody cast — 

That over, and over, and over again, 

Dream-like and low, like the wind harp's strain, 

" Be hushed my dark spirit !" seems ever to swell, 

Unbidden from out of thy heart's deepest cell ? 

Is there dwelling a magic in sounds like these. 

Which, faint like the voice of the dying breeze. 

Comes over the heart in its loneliest hour. 

And soothes it to rest with its quiet power ? 

The weary heart bowed with its burden stills. 

As that mournful sound through its chambers thrills — 

Stills from its throbbing tempestuous pain, 

To list to that sad sound o'er again ; 

For weary and sad tho' the spirit be 

It echoes the voices of memory. 



SHEAVES OF TIME'S HARYEST. 

Time passed his hand o'er the brow of youth, 

And ploughed deep furrows where once 'twas smooth, 

Then he wrote great Hues of thought and care 

In the place of the smiles that it used to wear ; 

Then sprinkled the ebon locks with grey, 

And faded the light of the eyes away, 

And the reaper smiled at the mourners' grief, 

As he gathered home this ripened sheaf 

Time stood by a forest dim and old, 

As its thousand years were well nigh told. 

And its fallen kings lay mouldering there. 

Where the grey moss swung in the chilly air. 

From ocean to ocean's distant shore 

That trackless forest shadowed o'er ; 

But a nation toils where those wild-wood leaves 

Were garnered once with that reaper's sheaves. 

Time stood on Baalbec's giant walls. 
And paced thro' proud Palmyra's halls. 
And like the echo of his tread 
Came funereal wailings for the dead ; 
And now the desert blasts alone 
Sigh o'er each fallen monarch's throne — 
The only spirit abroad that grieves 
Over those long since gathered sheaves. 

Time leaned against the humble shed, 
That sheltered the starving peasant's head. 



208 LICHEN TUFTS. 

And though heart-strings broke as the roof fell in, 
The groans of the dying were drowned in the din. 
What recked old Time the peasant's woes ? 
He had looked on a dying nation's throes ! 
Alike to him man's joy or grief, 
As he gathers one more human sheaf. 

Yet waiteth not that reaper dread. 
For the flower to wither and droop its head, 
For he cuts with his sickle, sharp and keen, 
The golden ear and the leaflet green. 
The babe that sports at its grandsire's knee, 
And the grey old man alike takes he. 
The starting bud and the withered leaf, 
He gathers to add to his well-grown sheaf 

The rose-tinged petals together rolled, 
And the bud untwisting each fragrant fold, 
The flower on its stem, scarce fully blown. 
He bears with his sheaves to his harvest home ; 
The youthful while hope still paints on the air. 
Visions of glory enchantingly fair. 
The reaper gathers, nor heeds our grief. 
He has need, perhaps, of this blooming sheaf. 

Alone that silent reaper stands 

As he binds his sheaves with his bony hands, 

And he scans the field of his harvest o'er 

As he scanned it a thousand years before — 

And he laughs as he watches the puny toil 

Of those whose labors he makes his spoil. 

For the world and its creatures, like Autumn leaves, 

He binds together — Time's harvest sheaves. 



A VOICE FEOM AFAR. 

Christmas Eve, 1855. 
I CALL thee ! Dost thou hear my call ? 

Or have those thrillmg inner chords 
Become too dull, and still, and cold, 

To vibrate to my words ? 
Within that chamber of thy heart 

Where old things half forgotten lie, 
By dust and cobwebs wreathed and veiled, 

Comes no fresh life to memory ? 
Stirs not within that silent fane, 

Some pulse of life lived once before. 
When well-known hands unbar its gates. 

And well-known footsteps cross its floor ? 
Send back those walls no echo note. 

To sounds that break their holy hush, 
When once they pealed an answer back. 

To every wayward music gush ? 
Within that temple's inmost shrine. 

Will memory's statue breathe no more. 
Like Memnon's, those deep anthem tones, 

It chanted oft in days of yore ? 

There is a charm to break its sleep, 
(Would I could wake that magic spell) 

When gathering its long silent voice. 

Loud, deep, and long, its tones shall swell ; 
9* 



210 LICHEN TUFTS. 

But till its long appointed hour 

Slow wheels around it must sleep on, 
And though I rouse an echo's voice, 

I cannot wake one livijig tone. 
I enter that deserted room, 

My garments brush the dust away. 
One quenchless votive lamp burns on. 

To light my dim and dusky way ; 
Feels not that pallid statue's brow, 

The living hand upon it pressed ? 
Does it not feel the holly wreath, 

I bring to crown its silent rest ? 

I have been with thee — but I turn. 
And bolt and bar that temple's door ; 

And know not if one life thrill told 
Thy soul my shadow crossed its floor ! 



ANNIVERSARY LETTER. 

CONDERSPORT, Christmos Eve, 1856. 
I ONCE had a friend, who hath passed away, 
Like the morning inists of a summer's day : 
Forth Hke an anchorless barque h^ went. 
But I know not whither his footsteps bent. 
Is he wearily climbing the pathway of fame, 
To hear echo mockingly shouting his name ? 
Is there glowing around him the sunshine of home, 
Or treads he the " valley of shadows" alone ? 
'Neath a rainbow ardi in the unknown land, 
Enrol they his name in a white-winged band ? 

But a shadow falls on me with a menace of woe. 
Ah ! his soul is yet fettered with earth-bonds I know, 
For never yet did that shadow fall, 
From a spirit released from its earthly thrall, 
Kor, alas ! from a soul with its sins forgiven, 
Spreading its wings for its home in Heaven ! 



Ah ! Soul of my Friend ! As the clouds in the sky, 
Trail their shadows o'er all things beneath them that lie. 
So the shade that cast over my spirit its chUl, 
Hath shown me thy soul is enclouded stiU ! 

But hast thou no token but this one to-night ? 
No message to speed like an " arrow of light," 
Athrill with thy feeling— aglow with thy thought ? 



212 



LICHEN TUFTS. 



Oh ! woe for the lessons that world-craft hath taught ! 

Oh, woe ! if the love which hath taught thee the cause 

Of every effect of God's wonderful laws, 

Hath curtained thy innermost self from the light — 

If reason hath blinded thy instinct's sight, 

And deeper woe, if the dross of earth — 

Things meaner, and less, and of poorer worth — 

Have darkened thy soul with their daily care, 

Till thou seest but their mildew everywhere ! 



ANNIYERSART LETTER. 

Lexington, III., Christmas Eve, 1851. 
I HEAR the rush of mountain streams, 
Underneath the evergreens, 

That bend beneath then- load of snow ; 
I hear the north wind's echo call, 
From mountain unto "mountain wall,'' 

Where the dark pine woods grow. 

I see the unfading mosses cling. 
And hosts of yellow lichens spring. 

From leafless trunk, and fallen bough — 
I see the green club-mosses creep. 
Along the ferny ledges steep. 

As tho' I stood among them now ! 

The thousand miles that intervene, 
Grow narrow as the pebbly stream, 

Before the homestead door ; 
And as night's deep'ning shadows darken, 
I almost hold my breath to barken, 

To the footsteps on the floor ; 
And the old familiar call. 
From the stairway in the hall. 

Sounds in my ear once more. 

But I turn me slow away. 
From the flickering lights that play, 
On the cottage window bars, 



214 LICHEN TUTTS. 

And a mist obscures my sight — 
I may not pass home's door to-night — 
So reads the fiat of the stars. 

Ah me ! 'Tis Christmas Eve again, 
And it belongs not unto them, 

But is like a monumental stone, 

Sacred to memory of one, 
Passed and gone — I know not whither- 
For a time — perhaps for ever ! 

'Tis Christmas Eve ! I sigh with pain, 
For old Time's kaleidoscope 
Has not answered last year's hope — 

Has not returned the lost again — 
"Not given me the faintest trace. 
Of the lost one's hiding place ; 

And these lines I now indite. 
By thy eyes may ne'er be read, 

For I know not if I write. 
To the living or the dead. 

But whether in the quick warm flesh, 

Or in robes that angels wear— 
Whether 'mid old scenes or 'mid fresh- 

Or full of joy, or full of care — 
If on a scaffold or a throne, 

Or if released from earthly thrall. 
Thou hast learned 'mid stars to roam, 
And claim yon over-arching dome 
For ever as thy glorious home — 



ANNIVERSARY LETTER. '215 

I ask not ; while the snow flakes fall, 
Upon the hills we used to tread, 

Upon this evening I wiU call 
On thee, if living — or if dead ! 

There ! good night ! God's blessing on thee ! 

Blessed dreams attend thy sleep ; 
If in Heaven, may angels crown thee, 

And waft thee to an upper deep ! 



MODERN FAIRIES. 

They say that the elves are dead and gone, 

And that never more by hill or lea, 
Will the fairy rings in the grass be worn, 

By the nightly dance as they used to be. 

The frost may blight, and the drouth may burn, 
And the grasshopper harvest the hay, 

No more will you charge it to witch or elf, 
Since their games have had their day. 

Believe it not ! They are living still ! 

You can find their traces night by night. 
Where they spread a thousand gossamer webs, 

About in the dew to bleach them white. 

They are spread like veils all over the grass. 
And over the drowsy red clover heads. 

White nettings of mist, with a wealth of pearls. 
That are strung like beads on the shining threads. 

Go, rob from the fairy bleaching ground, 
A veil to shadow some beaming face — 

The pearls dissolve, and a knotted string, 
Of that fairy web is the only trace ! 

Ay ! watch for the elves! They are livmg still ! 
But go to the haunts where they love to go, 



MODERN FAIRIES. 217 

Where the red moss chalices left behind, 
Are telling of last night's nectar flow ! 

Await them in faith ! await them in love ! 

When the young moon's boat sails down the west, 
And the blessings they leave in the woods and fields, 

Will linger around you and make you blest ! 



"FRAGMENT. 

The winds may give the treasures back, 
They gather from the dewy flowers, 

Leaving along their fragrant track, 

Sweet perfumes from Arcadian bowers. 

The waters may return the bread, 

The liberal hand upon it cast, 
But when will Time's returning tread, 

Bring back the dead, the buried past ? 

Morn may restore those glowing hues. 
That evening's curtain wrapped in shade. 

And evening shed again those dews. 

That morning dried from wood and glade. 

But Memory with oft wearied feet. 
Must wander o'er past scenes in vain. 

For never from their dark retreat. 
Will bygone hours return again ! 



YIGIL LESSONS. 

A STUDENT marks each moment as it passes, 
By the slow droppings from the eaves, 

Pattering on the broken, rustHng grasses, 
And the dock's red-spotted leaves. 

Then out so solemnly and slowly. 

The drops the precious moments dole. 

That the dim night hours, calm and holy, 
Seem endless to that watching soul. 

While day gathereth fresh splendor, 

In the caves of eastern seas. 
Earnest night, so calm and tender. 

Locks sleep's gates with silence' keys. 

But past their portals ere their closing, 
A horde of spirits had entered in. 

That 'mid the body's sweet reposing. 
Their pranks upon the soul begin. 

Hope, who cheered thro' day's hard battle. 
Queens it now on reason's throne, 

The real's work day toil and rattle, 
Merged in a music all her own. 

Or dreaming Faith o'erleaps for ever, 
Forgetful of life's parting pain, 



220 LICHEN TUFTS. 

That deeply shadowed, silent river, 

Once crossed, which ne'er is crossed again. 

Or stricken grief, with icy fingers. 
On the heart's bare quivering chords, 

Plays wailing music such as lingers. 
In love's despairing, farewell words. 

But oftener fancies fast and fleeting, 
Wild revels hold in every dream. 

Like troops of summer lightnings meeting. 
Kindred flashes in each stream. 

So pass the night hours with the sleeping, 

But without the gates of rest. 
Unwilling, weary vigils keeping, 

Sits w^akeful thought's unsleeping guest. 

Then that student still and lonely. 

Learns of voiceless Night and Thought, 

For in the deepest silence only. 
Their higher miracles are wrought 

On the beating pulse of nature. 
Lays each witch her finger light, 

Revealing by that secret feature, 
Every heart-throb hid from sight. 

It is worth this watch unsleeping. 
With the rain-song in one's ear. 

Thus to gather to one's keeping, 
Earnest truths taught only here ! 



LIFE'S NOONING SONG. 

Thank God ! I'll be a child no more ! 

Life's earlier woes and fears are dead, 
I've trod upon youth's utmost shore, 
And life full grown is half way o'er, 

With all its storms and darkness fled. 

My morning dawn was dark and wild, 

But cheery grows the lengthening day, 
And since I've ceased to be a child. 
The genial skies have ever smiled, 
And now I love its lingering way. 

Two brimful cups life offered me, 
A cup of joy — a cup of care — 
My right hand grasped the draught of glee- 
The left thrii^t care's grim bowl from me — 
And life has since grown rich and fair ! 

It may be dangers all unseen. 

Have lain in wait about my path — 
It may be pitfalls lay between 
My footsteps in the path I've been ; 

What matter ? I have passed unscathed. 

It may be down the hidden slope, 

My restless feet must soon descend, 
I must with fiercer dangers cope — 
I will not fear, but go in hope. 

And trust in the Unfailing Friend ! 



THE MOON OF BLOSSOMS IN PRAIRIE LAND. 

All the woods are full of blossoms, 

It is now the Moon of Blossoms, 

The Moon of all the snow white flowers.* 

The May cherry has departed. 

Swung its feathery plumes of sweetness 

For awhile on every Avind breath, 

On the slender twigs that bore them ; 

Then upon the breeze that kissed it 

Strewed the snow flakes of its petals. 

The wild plum had shed its sweetness, 
Till the air was laden with it ; 
Till the drowsy air grew drunken 
With the fragrance of its blooming. 
Then the blossoms blushed with pleasure — 
Blushed to find themselves more fragrant 
Than all other early flowers. 

And the wild bees from the torpor, 
Of the long and idle winter, 
Waked to work amid the flowers. 
Then from out the leafless snowdrift. 
From the plum-tree's blushing snowdrift, 
Came the busy hum of labor. 
Came the happy song of labor. 
Mingled with the drowsy odor 
Of its own exceeding sweetness: 
Till its petals withered slowly, 

^ The Senecas call May the Moon of White Blossoms. 



THE MOON OF BLOSSOMS IN PRAIRIE LAND. 223 

ShruDk and shrivelled in the sunshine. 
They refused to leave the calyx, 
And go drifting in their beauty, 
Like the apple's faded petals ; 
Like the graceful snow flakes drifting 
In the passing winds that shook them. 
Then the woods ablaze with purple, 
Flushed and flamed in all their borders. 
Crimson fringes edged the prairies, 
Rosy purple framed the rivers 
With a setting richer, rarer. 
Than the costliest palace mirrors, 
Though the lowliest and poorest 
With their seedy rags unchidden. 
And their bare feet unforbidden. 
Might adjust their shaggy tresses 
By those grand and wondrous mirrors ; 
And the children gathered treasures, 
Priceless treasures, from the tree-tops, 
In those countless purple branches. 
In the pea-bloom of the red bud. 
But before this flushing fadeth, 
Comes the dog-wood's robes of whiteness, 
Mingled with this royal raiment. 
And from out each clump and thicket. 
And from every patch of brushwood. 
From beside the pools of water. 
From the hillock and the sand-ridge. 
And from out the isles of timber. 
And the borders of the prairie, 
Comes a fragrance fresher, sweeter. 
Than the breath of strawberries, 



224 LICHEN TUFTS. 

Than the odor of the roses ; 
Like the smell of fruit and flowers, 
With a fairy's blessing on it, 
Making it a thing unreal, 
Only something we have dreamed of. 
Though it freshens all the senses 
With its penetrating presence. 
'Tis the fragrance of the crab tree, 
'Tis the bursting of the flowers, 
From the rosy buds, that swelling 
With the prisoned odors in them, 
Could not longer hold their riches. 

And the earth is strewed with blossoms, 
Blue as is the sky above it. 
Blue-bells blossom by the water, 
May-bells bloom among tlte grasses. 
The wild larkspur seeks the road-side. 
And the blue phlox everywhere 
Utters forth its soul in odor. 

And like stars amid the azure 
Early buttercups are blooming ; 
And this bursting world of flowers, 
Keeping time to all the trilling. 
Sinking, swelling songs and carols. 
Of the whip-poor-wills and robins. 
Swing and sway upon the breezes, 
In the airy dance of flowers. 
In the white-robed Moon of Blossoms. 



A REVERIE. 

A CLOUD o'ershadoweth my soul, 
With many a silvery purple fold, 
And ragged edge of hazy gold. 

And sunset smiling through the whole. 

A shadow, in whose softening shade, 
The long-ago comes floating back, 
With song and perfume on its track. 

And seems as 'tAvere the present made. 

The far-off, through the wilds of space, 
A welcome vision draweth near. 
Wreathed with familiar smiles, and dear. 

To me in this lone stranger place. 

The future, in a misty veil. 

Draws this magic cloud beneath. 
Like Dian in a vapory wreath. 

And tells her prophet tale. 

I seem to leave this mould of clay. 

And out among these things of thought, 
So near me by enchantment brought, 

To go, ethereal as they. 
10 



226 LICHEN TUFTS. 

I thank thee, cloud, that thou hast made 
Amid life's toils, so stern and real, 
An hour so tender and ideal 

As this, of light embalmed in shade. 

I thank thee, that the glare of day 

Sometimes dissolves in clouds like this ; 
Where rainbow prophecies of bliss, 

Shine on my often darkened way. 



ALTER EaO. 

We meet as the waters meet, 

Our souls together run, 

And mingle into one, 
And life grows deep and sweet. 

From the heart that beats in thee 

Stirs the inmost pulse in me. 
And the thought that in my brain, 

Struggles faintly to be said. 
Thy soul echoes back again. 

Ere a sentence has been made. 
We quicken each the other's thought. 

But so akin our sayings rise, 

That be they vain, or be they wise, 
"Which spoke them we remember not. 

The streams of our lives diverge, and change. 

And labor attends us whither Tve go ; 
New events and faces, diverse and strange, 

Drift around us, v^avering to and fro ; 
And each hath its load of especial care. 
And a different tide, a different air. 

Is urging us evermore on and on. 
But we meet again, as the waters meet. 

And the past is vanished away and gone ; 
And now life has grown — oh, more than sweet ! 



228 



LICHEN TUFTS. 



The treasures we've gathered, the lives we've led, 

Have deepened and widened the heart and head ; 

And yet, ever tendeth my soul to thee — 

And ever thy spirit is coming to me, 

As the rivers tend dowTi to their home in the sea ! 



THE END. 



Nov. 3 1860. 



i^^^^^s 



